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THE MESSAGE OF 

THE COLLEGE TO THE 

CHURCH 

A COURSE OF 

SUNDAY EVENING ADDRESSES IN 

LENT, 1901 

DELIVERED IN 
THE OLD SOUTH CHURCH, BOSTON 



BOSTON 
CHICAGO 






THE LIBRARY OF 

CONGRESS, 
Two Copita Received 

OCT. 3 1901 

COPVHIGHT ENTRY 

CLASS (^ XXc. No. 

o^O O S?_ O 

COPY B. 



Copyrighted, 1901 
By J. H. Tewksbury 



Contents 



I 

The Religion of a College Student 9 

II 
The Definition of a Good Man 39 

III 
The Development of a Public Conscience.... 67 

IV 
The College and the Home 85 

V 
The Mutual Dependence of the College 

AND the Church iiS 

VI 
The College Graduate and the Church 145 



Forewords 

The eminent names attached to the several 
addresses which compose this book are suf- 
ficient introduction to the reader, and abundant 
assurance of the high quality of the work. 
Nevertheless, it has seemed to the publishers 
that a few words indicative of the purpose in 
which these addresses originated might be of 
some interest, and perhaps enable the general 
reader to approach them in the right spirit. 

For the last twelve years it has been the cus- 
tom in the Old South Church in Boston to 
give a course of Sunday evening lectures dur- 
ing Lent. All save three of these courses 
have been given by the pastor of the church. 
Of the courses given by speakers other than 
the pastor, the third and last is contained in 
this volume. 

In arranging this course of lectures the ob- 
ject was to gain from the college its outlook 
upon the faith and work of the Church. The 
colleges and universities of New England are 
the creation of the Congregational churches of 
New England. In the first instance they were 



6 Forewords 

founded to provide a pious and learned minis- 
try to the churches. In the Puritan concep- 
tion of the essentialness of the college to the 
Church there is a wisdom and a boldness 
worthy of all admiration. These churches 
have made and they have hitherto largely sus- 
tained the colleges. The colleges are the chil- 
dren of the churches. It is well, therefore, 
diat the elder should learn from the younger; 
the parent institution from the filial. 

The sins of the college are not the subject of 
this volume, nor its limitations, nor the wisdom 
and adequacy of its ideals, nor the success or 
failure attending their pursuit, nor the neces- 
sary infallibility of its advice to the Church. 
This book is a candid and manly response to 
a serious question: What has the college to 
say to the Church about its faith and work? 
How do the Church's conception and adminis- 
tration of Christianity appear to the college 
world, and to the men who come from that 
world into the great communion of citizenship ? 
According to the college, as churchmen what 
are our real and our unreal problems, our gen- 
uine and our imaginary dangers, our solemn 



Forewords 7 

vocation and our mere play r.t religious living, 
our deepest sources of strength and our para- 
lyzing ignorance, our misplaced confidence and 
our radical weakness? Has the college any 
clear, brave, wise words to say to the Church 
to help it out of its childish fears into the 
power and hope of essential Christianity ? Is 
anything gained when pastors and their people 
seriously entertain the college man's perspec- 
tive of life and faith ? What are the supreme 
values as tested by intellectual competence, 
candor and freedom? 

Thus may be indicated the mood to which 
the addresses in this volume are the response. 
The interest in these addresses when given in 
the Old South Church, during Lent of the pres- 
ent year, was extraordinary ; and they are now 
published to meet a wide and persistent de- 
mand. The several authors have long been 
known to the public as men to whom it is wise 
and good to listen, and this book is issued in 
the assurance that they will value it most who 
are awake to the perils and the possibilities of 
the Church to-day. 

George A. Goiidon. 
Old South Parsonage, 
Boston, Mass. 



THE RELIGION OF A COLLEGE 
STUDENT 

PROFESSOR FRANCIS GREENWOOD PEABODY, D. D. 



THE RELIGION OF A COLLEGE 
STUDENT 

We have heard many appeals to the college 
student concerning his duty to the Christian 
Church. He should be, it is urged, a more 
constant attendant at its worship; he should 
commit himself more openly to its cause ; he 
should guard himself against the infidelity and 
indecision which attack him with such strategy 
under the conditions of college life. May it 
not be of advantage, however, to consider this 
relation from the opposite point of view? 
May it not be instructive to inquire what the 
Christian Church must provide in order to meet 
the needs of an educated young man, and what 
the college student demands that the Church 
shall teach and illustrate? What has a young 
man the right to demand as a condition of his 
loyalty and devotion? What is there which 
the Christian Church must learn concerning the 
character and ideals of a normal, educated, 
modern youth before it can hope to lead the 



II 



12 The College to the Church 

heart of such a youth to an unconstrained 
obedience? What is the rehgion of a college 
student ? 

There are, of course, certain limitations to 
such an inquiry. We must assume on both 
sides open-mindedness, teachableness, serious- 
ness and good faith. We cannot take into 
account either a foolish student or a foolish 
Church. There are, on the one hand, some 
youths of the college age whom no conceivable 
adaptation of religious teaching can hope to 
reach. They are self-absorbed, self-conscious, 
self-satisfied, self-conceited. There is little 
that the Church can do for them but to pray 
that, as they grow older, they may grow more 
humble, and, therefore, more teachable. On 
the other hand, there are some methods of re- 
ligious activity which cannot reasonably an- 
ticipate the cooperation of educated men. 
Here and there an imaginative young person 
may be won by emotional appeals or ecclesias- 
tical picturesqueness ; but the normal type of 
thoughtful youth demands of the Church so- 
berness, intellectual satisfaction and verifiable 
claims. We must dismiss from consideration 



Religion of a College Student 13 

both the unreasoning youth and the unrea- 
sonable Church. We set before ourselves, on 
the one hand, an alert, open-minded, well- 
trained youth, looking out with eager eyes in- 
to the mystery of the universe; and, on the 
other hand, a thoughtful, candid, sensible 
Church, resting its claim not on tradition or 
passion, but on its perception and mainte- 
nance of verifiable truth. How shall these 
two factors of modern life — the chief factors 
of its future stability — the life of thoughtful 
youth and the truth of the Christian religion 
come to know and help each other? and what 
are the traits of Christian teaching which 
must be unmistakably recognized before it 
can commend itself to the young student of 
the modern world? 

To these questions it must be answered, 
that the religion of a collgee student is 
marked, first of all, by a passion for reality. 
No efifort of the Church is more mistaken than 
the attempt to win the loyalty of intelligent 
young people by multiplying the accessories 
or incidentals of the religious life — its ec- 
clesiastical forms, its emotional ecstasies, its 



14 The College to the Church 

elaborateness of organization, its opportuni- 
ties of sociability. The modern college stu- 
dent, while in many respects very immature, 
is extraordinarily alert in his discernment of 
anything which seems to him of the nature of 
indirectness or unreality. He has a passion 
for reality. The first demand he makes of 
his companions or his teachers is the demand 
for sincerity, straightforwardness and sim- 
plicity. He is not likely to be won to the 
Christian life by any external persuasion, la- 
boriously planned "to draw in young people," 
and to make religion seem companionable and 
pleasant. These incidental activities of the 
Church have their unquestionable usefulness 
as expressions of Christian sentiment and 
service, but they are misapplied when con- 
verted into decoys. They are corollaries of 
religious experience, not preliminaries of it; 
they are what one wants to do when he is a 
Christian, but not what makes a thoughtful 
man believe in Christ. The modern young 
man sees these things just as they are. In- 
deed, he is inclined to be on his guard against 
their strategy. He will nibble at the bait, 



Religion of a College Student 15 

but he will not take the hook. He will con- 
sume the refreshments of the church, he will 
serve on its committees, he will enjoy its 
esthetic effects, but he still withholds him- 
self from the personal consecration which 
these were designed to induce. He will ac- 
cept no substitute for reality. He wants the 
best. He is not old enough to be diffident or 
circuitous in his desires ; he does not linger in 
the outer courts of truth ; he marches straight 
into the Holy of holies, and lifts the veil from 
the central mystery. Thus the Church often 
fails of its mission to the student, because it 
imagines him to be frivolous and indifferent, 
when in reality he is tremendously in earnest 
and passionately sincere. 

And suppose, on the other hand, that the 
Church meets this candid creature just where 
he is, and, instead of offering him accessories 
and incidentals as adapted to his frivolous 
mind, presents to him, with unadorned and 
sober reasonableness, the realities of religion. 
What discovery is the Church then likely to 
make? It may discover, to its own surprise, 
and often to the surprise of the youth himself. 



i6 The College to the Church 

an unanticipated susceptibility in him to re- 
ligious reality, and a singular freshness and 
vitality of religious experience. A great 

many people imagine that the years from 
seventeen to twenty-two are not likely to be 
years of natural piety. The world, it is 
urged, is just making its appeal to the flesh 
and to the mind with overmastering power, 
while the experience of life has not yet 
created for itself a stable religion. Fifteen 
years ago it was determined in Harvard Uni- 
versity that religion should be no longer re- 
garded as a part of academic discipline but 
should be offered to youth as a privilege and 
an opportunity. It was then argued by at 
least one learned person that the system was 
sure to fail because, by the very conditions of 
their growth, young men were unsusceptible 
to religion. They had outgrown, he urged, 
the religion of their childhood, and had not 
yet grown into the religion of their maturity ; 
so that a plan which rested on faith in the in- 
herent religiousness of young men was doomed 
to disappointment. If, however, the vol- 
untary system of religion applied to univer- 



Religion of a College Student ly 

sity life has proved anything in these fifteen 
years, it has proved the essentially religious 
nature of the normal educated young man of 
America. To offer religion not as an obliga- 
tion of college life, but as its supreme privi- 
lege, was an act of faith in young men. It 
assumed that when religion was honestly and 
intelligently presented to the mind of youth it 
would receive a reverent and responsive 
recognition. 

The issue of this undertaking has serious 
lessons for the Christian Church. It disposes 
altogether of the meager expectation with 
which the life of youth is frequently regarded. 
I have heard a preacher, addressing a college 
audience, announce that just as childhood was 
so assailed by infantile diseases and mishaps 
that it was surprising to see any child grow 
up, so youth was assailed by so many sins that 
it was surprising to see any young man grow 
up unstained. There is no rational basis for 
this enervating skepticism. The fact is that 
it is natural for a young man to be good, just 
as it is natural for a child to grow up. A 
much wiser word was spoken by one of my 



i8 The College to the Church 

colleagues, who, having been asked to ad- 
dress an audience on the temptations of the 
college life, said that he should devote him- 
self chiefly to its temptations to excellence. 
A college boy, that is to say, is not, as many 
suppose, a peculiarly misguided and essential- 
ly light-minded person. He is, on the con- 
trary, set in conditions which tempt to excel- 
lence and is peculiarly responsive to every sin- 
cere appeal to his higher life. Behind the 
mask of light-mmdedness or self-assertion 
which he assumes, his interior life is wrestling 
with fundamental problems, as Jacob wrestled 
with the angel and would not let it go until 
it blessed him. "Your young men," said the 
prophet, with deep insight into the nature of 
youth, "shall see visions." They are our 
natural idealists. The shades of the prison- 
house of common life have not yet closed 
about their sense of the romantic, the heroic, 
the noble. 

To this susceptibility of youth the Church, 
if it be wise, must address its teaching. It 
must believe in a young man, even when he 
does not believe in himself. It must attempt 



Religion of a College Student 19 

no adaptation of truth to immaturity or in- 
difference. It must assume that a young 
man, even though he disguises the fact by 
every subterfuge of modesty or mock de- 
fiance, is a creature of spiritual vision, and 
that his secret desire is to have that vision in- 
terpreted and prolonged. When Jesus met 
the young men whom he wanted for his dis- 
ciples, his first relation with them was one 
of absolute, and apparently unjustified, con- 
fidence. He believed in them and in their 
spiritual responsiveness. He disclosed to 

them the secrets of their own hearts. He dis- 
missed accessories and revealed realities. He 
did not cheapen religion or make small de- 
mands. He bade these men leave all and 
follow him. He took for granted that their 
nature called for the religion he had to offer, 
and he gave it to them without qualification 
or fear. The young men, for whom the ac- 
cidental aspects of religion were thus stripped 
away and its heart laid bare, leaped to meet 
this revelation of reality. "We have found 
the Messiah," they told each other. They 
had been believed in even before they believed 



20 The College to the Church 

in themselves, and that which the new sense 
of reahty disclosed to them as real, they at 
last in reality became. 

Such is the first aspect of the religion of the 
student — its demand for reality. To reach 
the heart of an educated young man the mes- 
sage of the Church must be unequivocal, un- 
complicated, genuine, masculine, direct, real. 
This, however, is but a part of a second qual- 
ity in the religion of educated youth. The 
teaching of the Church to which such a mind 
will listen must be, still further, consistent 
with truth as discerned elsewhere. It must 
involve no partition of life between thinking 
and believing. It must be, that is to say, a 
rational religion. The religion of a college 
student is one expression of his rational life. 
To say this is not to say that religion must 
be stripped of its mystery or reduced to the 
level of a natural science in order to commend 
itself to educated youth. On the contrary, 
the tendencies of the higher education lead in 
precisely the opposite direction. They lead 
to the conviction that all truth, whether ap- 
proached by the way of science, philosophy, 



Religion of a College Student 21 

art or religion, opens before a serious student 
into a world of mystery, a sense of the unat- 
tained, a spacious region of idealism, where 
one enters with reverence and awe. Instead 
of demanding that religion shall be reduced to 
the level of other knowledge, it will appear 
to such a student more reasonable to demand 
that all forms of knowledge shall be lifted 
into the realm of faith, mystery and idealism. 
It is, however, quite another matter to dis- 
cover in the teaching of religion any funda- 
mental inconsistency with the spirit of re- 
search and the method of proof which the stu- 
dent elsewhere candidly accepts ; and we may 
be sure that it is this sense of inconsistency 
which is the chief source of any reaction from 
religious influence now to be observed among 
educated young men. 

Under the voluntary system of religion at 
Harvard University we have established a 
meeting-place, known as "The Preacher's 
Room," where the minister conducting morn- 
ing prayers spends some hours each day in 
free and unconstrained intimacy with such 
students as may seek him. This room has 



22 The College to the Church 

witnessed many frank confessions of religious 
difficulty and denial, and as each member of 
our staflf of preachers recalls his experiences 
at the University he testifies that the most 
fruitful hours of his service have been those 
of confidential conference in the privacy of 
the Preacher's Room. But if one were 
further called to describe those instances 
of religious bewilderment and helplessness 
which have seemed to him in his official duty 
most pathetic and most superfluous, he would 
not hesitate to admit that they were the by 
no means infrequent cases of young men who 
have been brought up in a conception of re- 
ligion which becomes untenable under the 
conditions of university life. A restricted 
denominationalism, a backward-looking ec- 
clesiasticism, an ignorant defiance of Biblical 
criticism, and, no less emphatically, an in- 
tolerant and supercilious liberalism — these 
habits of mind become simply impossible 
when a young man finds himself thrown into 
a world of wide learning, religious liberty, 
and intellectual hospitality. Then ensues, 
for many a young mind, a pathetic and even 



Religion of a College Student 23 

tragic period of spiritual hesitation and recon- 
struction. The young man wanders through 
dry places, seeking rest and finding none ; and 
it i^ quite impossible for his mind to say : "I 
will return into my house from whence I 
came out." Meantime his loving parents 
and his anxious pastor observe with trembling 
his defection from the old ways, deplore the 
influence of the university upon religious 
faith, and pray for a restoration of belief 
which is as contrary to nature as the restora- 
tion of the oak to the acorn from which it 
grew. 

Now, in all this touching experience, where 
is the gravest blame to be laid? It must, no 
doubt, be confessed that among the condi- 
tions of college life there are some which tend 
to encourage in a young man a certain pert- 
ness and priggishness of mind which make 
the old ways of faith seem old-fashioned and 
primitive. Indeed, it seems to some young 
men that any way of faith is superfluous to 
a thorough man of the world, such as the 
average sophomore ought to be. But these 
cheerful young persons, for whom the past 



24 The College to the Church 

has no lessons and the future no visions, and 
for whom the new ideal of self-culture has for 
the moment suppressed the earlier ideals 
of self-sacrifice or service, are not a 
type of student life which need be 
taken seriously. They are the lookers-on of 
the academic world, the dilettante and 
amateur minds in a community of scholars. 
The strenuous game of real learning goes on; 
and these patrons of the strife sit, as it were, 
along the side lines and wear the college col- 
ors, but do not participate in the training or 
the conflict or the victory. We are thinking 
of that much more significant body of youth 
who are in deadly earnest with their thought, 
and who find it an essential of their intel- 
lectual peace to attain some sense of unity in 
their conception of the world. For this type 
of college youth — the most conscientious, 
most thoughtful, most precious — the blame 
for inconsistency between the new learning 
and the inherited faith lies, for the most part, 
not with the college, but with the Church. 
There was once a time when these young 
minds could be secluded by solicitous parents 



Religion of a College Student 25 

and anxious pastors from most of the signs 
of change in modern thought. They could 
be prohibited from approaching great tracts 
of literature ; they could be hidden in the 
cloistered life of a strictly guarded college; 
their learning could be ensured to be in safe 
conformity with a predetermined creed. 
There is now no corner of the intellectual 
world where this seclusion is possible. Out 
of the most unexpected sources — a novel, a 
poem, a newspaper — issues the contagion of 
modern thought ; and, in an instant, the life 
that has been shut in and has seemed secure 
is hopelessly affected. 

And how does the young man, touched with 
the modern spirit, come to regard the faith 
which he is thus forced to reject? Some- 
times he regards it with a sense of pathos, as 
an early love soon lost; sometimes with a 
deep indignation, as the source of skepticism 
and denial. For one educated youth who is 
alienated from religion by the persuasions of 
science, philosophy or art, ten, v/e may be 
sure, are thus affected by the irrational or 
impractical teaching of religion. It is not an 



26 The College to the Church 

inherent issue between learning and faith 
which forces them out of the Church in which 
they were born ; it is an unscientific and re- 
actionary theory of faith. It is not the col- 
lege which must renew its conformity to the 
Church ; it is the Church which must open its 
eyes to the marvelous expansion of intellect- 
ual horizon which lies before the mind of 
every college student to-day. 

There is another aspect of the same ex- 
perience. This process of intellectual growth 
is often accompanied, not by a reaction from 
religion, but by a new appreciation of its 
reasonableness. In a degree which few who 
represent the Church have as yet realized, the 
expansion of the sphere -of truth is at the same 
time an enlargement and enrichment of re- 
ligious confidence. There is going on, with- 
in the college, often without the knowledge of 
the Church, a restoration of religious faith 
through the influence of intellectual liberty. 
I have seen more than one student come to 
college in a mood of complete antagonism to 
his earlier faith, and then I have seen that 
same youth in four years graduate from col- 



Religion of a College Student 27 

lege, and with a passionate consecration give 
himself to the calling of the Christian minis- 
try which he had so lately thought superfluous 
and outgrown. It was the simple conse- 
quence of his discovery that the religious life 
is not in conflict with the interests and aims of 
a university, but is precisely that ideal of con- 
duct and service toward which the spirit of 
a university logically leads. "I beseech you, 
therefore, brethren," says the apostle who 
knew most about the relation of philosophy to 
faith, "that ye present ... a reasonable 
service." It is a charge which the Christian 
Church still needs to hear. The service of the 
Church which is to meet the religion of a col- 
lege student must be a reasonable service, con- 
sistent with all reverent truth-seeking, open to 
the light, hospitable to progress, rational, 
teachable, free. The church which sets itself 
against the currents of reasonable thought, 
and has for great words like Evolution, 
Higher Criticism, Morality, Beauty, Law, 
only an undiscerning sneer, is in reality not 
the defender of the faith, but a positive con- 
tributor to the infidelity of the present age. 



28 The College to the Church 

The church which asks no loyalty that is not 
rational, no service of the heart that is not an 
offering of the mind, comes with its refresh- 
ing message to many a bewildered young 
mind, and is met by a renewed dedication to a 
reasonable service. 

So far, however, I have described the re- 
ligion of a college student as it appears in 
every thoughtful age. There remains one 
aspect of the religious life which is peculiarly 
characteristic of a college student in our own 
generation, and of which the Church in its re- 
lation to the young must take fresh account. 
Protestant teaching, from the time of Luther, 
has laid special emphasis on the Pauline dis- 
tinction between faith and works. It is not 
a man's performance, either of moral obliga- 
tions or ritual observances, that justifies him 
in the sight of God. He must offer that total 
consecration of the heart, that conversion of 
the nature, which makes him find his life in 
God. This teaching was a necessary protest 
against the externalism and ecclesiastical 
practices which had been for centuries re- 
garded by many as of the essence of the re- 



Religion of a College Student 2g 

Hgious life. "We are justified by faith;" 
"the just shall live by faith" — these great 
words give to religion a profounder, more 
spiritual and more personal significance as a 
relation between the individual soul and the 
living God. 

But suppose that this touch of the life of 
God is felt by the soul of man, and that the 
soul desires to express its religious life — what 
is to be its channel of utterance? The history 
of Protestantism for the most part answers : 
"The organ of religious expression is the 
tongue. When the life is moved by the Holy 
Ghost, it is led to speak as the Spirit gives it 
utterance. It tells rejoicingly of its new 

birth; it confesses Christ before its fellows; 
it preaches to others the message which has 
brought it hope and peace." Here is the 
basis of a large part of the organization of the 
Protestant churches — their meetings for free 
expression of prayer ; their association for re- 
ligious utterance; their test of faith through 
spoken confession. It is obvious that this 
channel of expression is legitimate and often 
inevitable. The fulness of religious emotion 



30 The College to the Church 

which descends from God to man leaps out 
of many lives into forms of speech, as natural- 
ly as the water which descends from the high 
hills leaps out from its conduit into the air. 

What the present age, however, is teaching 
us, as the world was never taught before, is 
that another and equally legitimate channel 
of expression is open to the life of faith. It 
is the language of works. We have come in 
these days to a time devoted in an unpre- 
cedented degree to the spirit of philanthropy. 
It is the age of social service. No life can 
yield itself to the current of the time without 
being swept into its movement of passionate 
fraternity and social justice. But what i» 
the attitude of the Christian Church to this 
modern phenomenon of social service? It is 
quite true that the Church is one of the most 
active agents of this philanthropic renais- 
sance. The sense of social responsibility is 
manifested by the prodigious increase of par- 
ish charities, parish organizations, institution- 
al churches, and general benevolence. The 
Church, however, has failed adequately to 
recognize the legitimate place of action as a 



Religion of a College Student 31 

trustworthy witness of faith. To do for 
others has seemed to the tradition of the 
Church a superadded and secondary effect of 
religion, not one of its essential and original 
factors. First, one is to be religious ; and 
then, as a consequence or ornament of his re- 
ligion, he is to concern himself with the bet- 
ter ordering of the human world. 

A much deeper relation between faith and 
works is indicated by those solemn words in 
which Jesus sums up, as he says, "the whole 
law, and the prophets." There is, he teaches, 
a kinship of nature between the love of God 
and the love of man. The second command- 
ment is like the first. Both are parts of a 
complete religion. When a modern life, that 
is to say, is moved by the spirit of philan- 
thropy, that impulse is not something which 
the Church may stand apart from and com- 
mend as of another sphere. It is, in fact, 
one legitimate expression of the religious life ; 
uttering itself not by the tongue, but by the 
hand, as though there had been heard the 
great word of the apostle: "He that loveth 
not his brother whom he hath seen, how can 



32 The College to the Church 

he love God whom he hath not seen?" In 
other words, the Church has permitted this 
modern movement of philanthropy to proceed 
as though it were not an essential part of the 
Christian life, when in reality this whole vast 
enterprise is the way in which the modern 
world is actually uttering that faith in the 
possible redemption of mankind, to accom- 
plish which the Church of Jesus Christ was 
expressly designed and inspired. I stood one 
day in the house of a woman's settlement, set 
in the most squalid conditions of the life of 
a city and purifying the neighborhood with its 
unassuming devotion, and a minister of the 
Christian Church who was present looked 
about him and said : "This is a very beauti- 
ful and noble work, but I wish there were 
more of Christ in it." One felt like asking, 
How could there be more of Christ than was 
already there? Would technical confession 
or oral expression add any significance to such 
a work in his eyes who said : "Not every one 
that saith to me, Lord, Lord, . . . but he 
that doeth the will of my Father ?" Was there 
ever, indeed, a work more full of Christ? 



Religion of a College Student 33 

Might not Jesus, if he should come again on 
earth, pass without notice many a splendid 
structure reared in his name, and, seeking out 
these servants of the broken-hearted and the 
bruised of the world, say to them : " Inas- 
much as ye have done it unto one of the least 
of these my brethren, ye have done it unto 
me"? Why is the Church not far-sighted 
enough to claim for herself what is justly her 
own? She clings to the test of faith by a 
single form of expression, when in fact the 
Spirit of God is manifesting itself at the pres- 
ent time by another way of expression. And 
so it comes to pass that the most immediate 
problem for the Church is to find a place within 
her religious experience for the new manifesta- 
tion of self-effacing philanthropy, and to claim 
the age of social service as at heart an age of 
faith. 

Now, at precisely this point, where the 
first expression of the Spirit of God 
takes the form of the service of man, 
the Christian Church meets the religion 
of the college student. The normal type of 
a serious-minded young man at the present 



111 



34 The College to the Church 

time does not talk much about religion. 
Sometimes this reserve proceeds from self- 
consciousness and ought to be overcome, but 
quite as often it proceeds from modesty and 
ought to be reverenced. At any rate, such 
is the college student — a person disinclined 
to much profession of piety, and not easy to 
shape into the earlier type of expressed dis- 
cipleship. Yet, at the same time, this young 
man is extraordinarily responsive to the new 
call for human service. I suppose that never 
in the history of education were so many 
young men and young women in our colleges 
profoundly stirred by a sense of social re- 
sponsibility and a passion for social justice. 
The first serious question which the college 
student asks is not, " Can I be saved ? Do I 
believe?" but, "What can I do for others? 
What can I do for those less fortunate than 
I ? " No one can live in a community of 
these young lives without perceiving a qual- 
ity of self-sacrificing altruism so beautiful and 
so eager that it is akin to the emotions which 
in other days brought in a revival of religion. 
What is the dutv of the Church to a mood 



Religion of a College Student 35 

like this ? The duty of the Church — or rath- 
er the privilege of the Church — is to recognize 
that this is a revival of religion; that in this 
generous movement of human sympathy there 
is a legitimate and acceptable witness of the 
life of God in the soul of the modern world. 
It may not be that form of evidence which 
other times have regarded as valid; it may, 
perhaps, not be the most direct way of re- 
ligious expression; but none the less it hap- 
pens to be the way through which the Holy 
Spirit is at the present time directing the 
emotional life of youth to natural utterance. 
" I am not very religious, " said one frank 
youth to me one day, " but I should like to do 
a little to make of Harvard College something 
more than a winter watering-place." But was 
not that youth religious? Was it not the 
Spirit of God which was stirring his young 
heart? What, indeed, is the final object of 
religion if it is not to include the making of 
that better world which he in his dream de- 
sired to see? In this quality of the religion 
of a college student the Church must believe. 
It must take him as he is, and let him testify 



36 The College to the Church 

by conduct if he will not testify by words. 
If the student might be assured that the re- 
ligion which the Church represents is a practi- 
cal, working, ministering faith ; if he could 
see that the mission of the Church was not the 
saving of a few fortunate souls from a 
wrecked and drifting world, but the bringing 
of the world itself, like a still seaworthy ves- 
sel, with its whole cargo of hopes and fears, 
safe to its port; if he could believe that in 
the summons of the time to unselfish service 
he was in reality hearing the call of the Living 
God ; then he would see in the Church not, 
as he is often inclined to see, an obstinate de- 
fender of impossible opinions, or a hothouse 
for exotic piety, or a cold storage warehouse 
to preserve traditions which would perish in 
the open air, but the natural expression of 
organized righteousness, the body of those 
who are sanctified for others' sakes, and to 
such a Church he would offer his honest and 
practical loyalty. 

These are the tests to which the Church 
must submit if it would meet the religion of a 
college student — the tests of reality, reason- 



Religion of a College Student 37 

ableness and practical service. A religion 
without reality — formal, external, technical, 
obscurantist; a religion without reasonable- 
ness — omniscient, dogmatic, timid; a religion 
which does not greet the spirit of practical 
service as the spirit of Christ — a religion of 
such a kind may win the loyalty of emotional 
or theological or ecclesiastical minds, but it 
is not acceptable to the normal type of edu- 
cated American youth. Such natures de- 
mand first a genuine, then a rational, and 
then a practical, religion, and they are held to 
the Christian Church by no bond of sentiment 
or tradition which will prevent their seeking 
a more religious life elsewhere. And what 
is this but a wholesome challenge to the 
Church of Christ to renew its vitality at the 
sources of its real power? The intellectual 
issues of the present time are too real to be 
met by artificiality and too rational to be in- 
terpreted by traditionalism; the practical 
philanthropy of the present time is too absorb- 
ing and persuasive to be subordinated or ig- 
nored. It is a time for the Church to dismiss 
all affectations and all assumptions of au- 



38 The College to the Church 

thority, and to give itself to the reality of 
rational religion and to the practical redemp- 
tion of an unsanctified world. This return 
to simplicity and service will be at the same 
time a recognition of the religion of a col- 
lege student and a renewal of the religion of 
Jesus Christ. 



II 

THE DEFINITION OF A GOOD 

MAN 

PRESIDENT WILLIAM DEWITT HYDE, D. D. 



THE DEFINITION OF A GOOD MAN 

"He hath showed thee, O man, what is good" — 
Micah 6:8. 

Too long we have been content to urge men 
by emotional appeals to be good. The time 
has come to show men in clear intellectual 
terms what a good man is. For goodness 
does not consist in doing or refraining from 
doing this or that particular thing. It de- 
pends on the whole aim and purpose of the 
man who does it, or refrains from doing it. 
Anything which a good man does, as part of 
a good plan of life, is made thereby a good 
act. Anything that a bad man does, as 
part of a bad plan of life, becomes thereby an 
evil act. Precisely the same external act is 
good for one man and bad for another. An 
example or two will make this clear. 

Two men seek political office. For one 
man it is the gate of heaven ; to the other it is 
the door to hell. One man has established 
himself in a business or profession in which 
he can earn an honest living, and support his 



41 



42 The College to the Church 

family. He has acquired sufficient standing 
in his business so that he can turn it over 
temporaril}^ to his partners or subordinates. 
He has solved his own problem ; and he has 
strength, time, energy, capacity, money, 
which he can give to solving the problems of 
the public. Were he to shirk public office, 
or evade it, or fail to take all legitimate 
means to secure it, he would be a coward, a 
traitor, a parasite on the body politic. Hence 
public office is for this man the gateway of 
heaven. 

The other man has not mastered any busi- 
ness or profession ; he has not made himself 
indispensable to any employer or firm ; he has 
no permanent means of supporting himself 
and his family. If he gives up his job, he 
cannot get it again, and has no prospect of 
getting another as good. He sees a political 
office in which he can get a little more salary 
for doing a good deal less work than is possi- 
ble in his present position. He seeks the 
office as a means of getting his living out of 
the public. From that day forth he joins the 
horde of mere office-seekers, aiming to get 



Definition of a Good Man 43 

out of the public a living he is too lazy, or too 
incompetent, or too proud to earn in private 
employment. Do n't you see that the very 
same external act which was the other man's 
strait, narrow gateway to heaven, is for this 
man the broad, easy descent into hell? 

Two women join the same women's club, 
and take part in the same program. One 
of them has her heart in her home; has ful- 
filled all the sweet charities of daughter, sis- 
ter, wife or mother: and in order to bring 
back to these loved ones at home wider inter- 
ests, larger friendships, and a richer and more 
varied life, has gone out into the club. No 
angel in heaven is better employed than she in 
the preparation and delivery of papers, and her 
attendance on committee meetings and at af- 
ternoon teas. 

The other woman finds home life dull and 
monotonous. She likes to get away from 
her children. She craves excitement, flat- 
tery, fame, social importance. She is rest- 
less, irritable, out of sorts, censorious, com- 
plaining, at home; animated, gracious, affa- 
ble, complaisant, abroad. For drudgery and 



44 The College to the Church 

duty she has no strength, taste or talent ; and 
the thought of these things is enough to give 
her dyspepsia, insomnia and nervous pros- 
tration. But for all sorts of public func- 
tions, for the preparation of reports and the 
organization of new charitable and philan- 
thropic and social schemes, she has all the 
energy of a steam-engine, the power of a 
dynamo. When this woman joins a new 
club, or writes a new paper, or gets a new 
office, though she does not a single thing 
more than her angel sister who sits by her 
side, she is playing the part of a devil. 

It is not what one does ; it is the whole 
purpose of life consciously or unconsciously 
expressed in the doing, that measures the 
worth of the man or woman who does it. At 
the family table, at the bench in the shop, at 
the desk in the office, in the seats at the thea- 
ter, in the ranks of the army, in the pews of 
the church, saint and sinner sit side by side; 
and the keenest outward observer cannot de- 
tect the slightest difference in the particular 
things that they do. The good man is he 
who, in each act he does or refrains from do- 



Definition of a Good Man 45 

ing, is seeking the good of all the persons 
who are affected by his action. The bad man 
is the man who, whatever he does or refrains 
from doing, leaves out of account the inter- 
ests of some of the people whom his action is 
sure to affect. If there is any sphere of 
human welfare to which you are indifferent, 
if there are any people in the world whose 
interests you deliberately disregard, then no 
matter how many acts of charity and philan- 
thropy and industry and public spirit you 
perform — acts which would be good if a good 
man did them — in spite of them all, you are 
an evil man. A man is either wholly good 
in the purpose of his life, so that he can say 
with the old Latin poet, "I am a man; and 
nothing human is alien to me" ; or else there 
is some good which he disregards and de- 
spises ; in which case he is an evil man. He 
that sinneth at any one point in this universal 
sympathy with human good, is, as St. James 
and the Stoics tell us, guilty of all. It mat- 
ters not whether you throw a brickbat 
through a plate-glass window, smashing out 
a big, ragged hole, or shoot a rifle-ball 



46 The College to the Church 

through it, cutting a small, round hole. In 
either case the pane of glass is spoiled, its 
market value is destroyed, and you must put 
in a new one. Precisely so, no man is a 
good man unless he makes all good the object 
of his will ; or, in religious language, unless 
he wills the will of God. Good acts, unless 
they are all good, and have the universal 
good as their conscious or unconscious aim, 
do not make a good man. But the good 
man, who wills the universal good in all his 
actions, makes whatever act he does intelli- 
gently from this motive, a good act. 

Now we know the form which the good 
man's will must take. He wills the good of 
all who are affected by his action; counting 
nothing human alien to himself. If man 
were omnipotent and infinite, that would be 
the end of our task. All the good man would 
have to do would be to make sure that he 
willed the good of all men, and then that good 
would be accomplished. But we men and wo- 
men are not omnipotent. We are very finite 
and feeble. Of all the good we will, we can ac- 
complish but an infinitesimal part. Hence, 



Definition of a Good Man 47 

out of all the good we would like to do, and 
would do if we had power, we must choose 
which tiny part we will actually set ourselves 
to accomplish. To do one thing we must 
give up doing a hundred other things. 

Hence the first part of the good life, which 
we have thus far gained, is the easiest and 
simplest part of it. The harder part is to 
choose wisely what part of the universal good 
we shall undertake to do, and what we shall 
leave undone. For the attempt to do in a 
promiscuous way all the good which comes 
within reach, in a blind attempt to play the 
role of Omnipotence, inevitably ends in physi- 
cal breakdown, nervous wreck, financial im- 
poverishment and general uselessness. The 
good man is good for something; and in order 
to be good for something he must deliberately 
refuse to do a multitude of things which are 
all well enough in their way, but have no 
supreme claim upon him. 

If the first aspect of the good life is a 
widening of sympathy and devotion until no 
human interest is alien to us, the second step 
in this same good life is a strict narrowing 



48 The College to the Church 

dov/n of the range of our action to the very 
definite and particular channel through which 
our tiny strength can be put forth to the high- 
est advantage. A man's energy is like the 
power of a river. Left to flow at its own 
sweet will through the meadow, it is broad, 
beautiful, but impotent. It becomes power- 
ful and useful only when dammed up and 
compelled to run through a narrow raceway. 
Just where to build dams in our lives and 
how to turn the current into the raceway, is 
the second great problem of the good life. 

There are four principles by which the lim- 
itation of effort should be guided. The first 
principle of such selection is that the nearest 
duty is presumably for us the highest and 
best. In the cases we have cited, the family 
is the nearest duty to woman. No amount 
of promiscuous activity in clubs and conven- 
tions, in church and charity and settlement 
work, can ever atone for neglect of those ten- 
der family ties which bind her most closely to 
the life of the race. To sacrifice the duties of 
daughter, wife or mother to the grandest 
career ever opened to woman, is to sacrifice 



Definition of a Good Man 49 

the higher to the lower, the essential to the 
superficial, the real to the merely apparent. 
Not until these first duties have been faith- 
fully fulfilled, is any woman at liberty to seek 
for a larger, more congenial or more con- 
spicuous sphere. 

The same principle of nearness is what 
keeps our young man at his profession or 
business until he gets well established. For 
as the internal life of the family is woman's 
first duty, so the outward support of the 
family, and the power to earn money in some 
honest vocation, is the most fundamental duty 
of man. Until this is achieved, all other at- 
tractive careers should be put aside as tempta- 
tions. There are, indeed, persons who are 
disengaged from the family in which they 
were born, and have not yet entered families 
of their own, on whom these primal obliga- 
tions may not rest. They are free from 
these calls of duty. But for those who are 
in close family relations, the nearness and in- 
timacy of these ties constitute the first, fore- 
most and supreme claim on their service and 
devotion. Whatever such a person does, or 



IV 



50 The College to the Church 

refrains from doing in the outside world of so- 
ciety, politics, literature, art, recreation, must 
be done or left undone because through the do- 
ing it or leaving it undone, he or she best ful- 
fils this primal obligation to home. 

Defined, then, in terms of our main insight, 
supplemented by this first principle of selec- 
tion, our good man or woman is the one who 
wills the good of all who are afifected by his 
action, but when compelled to choose between 
the good of different persons, always chooses 
the good of family and kindred first, and re- 
luctantly, yet firmly, gives up the good of 
such other persons and interests as are incon- 
sistent with this primal devotion to home. 

The second principle of selection between 
competing goods is individual aptitude. As 
has already been said, the amount of good the 
best disposed individual can do is a very small 
proportion of that which needs to be done, 
and which he would like to do. In selecting 
what his special contribution shall be, the man 
who desires to do all the good that he can 
will select the line for which he feels special 
inclination and fitness. A man can do five 



Definition of a Good Man $i 

times as much good in the Hne of his special 
endowment and training, as he can in Hnes 
for which he has no special quahfication. 
Every man and woman can do something bet- 
ter than any one else who is available at that 
time and place ; hence, to leave any portion of 
this specific work undone for the sake of do- 
ing things which other people can do just as 
well, is to diminish the total worth of one's 
contribution to the world. 

If a woman is a teacher, for instance, and 
has special gifts for molding the minds and 
hearts of young children, then she owes to 
her profession and to those children the best 
teaching it is in her power to give. But good 
teaching depends first of all on abundant 
vitality, a cheerful and healthful outlook on 
life, eager and hearty interest in all sorts of 
objects. Hence the teacher must at all costs 
keep herself in prime physical health, and 
must have opportunity for seeing the sights 
and hearing the lectures and reading the 
books which will keep her mind and heart 
full of fresh, natural and human interest. 
For such a teacher to waste time and strength 



52 The College to the Church 

in household drudgery or dressmaking, or 
anything else which other people can be hired 
to do just as well, is a wrong to herself, to her 
profession and to the children entrusted to 
her care. Housekeeping and dressmaking 
are most useful and honorable employments. 
They are the very best things that a great 
many people can do, and they should be left, 
as far as possible, to be done by those people ; 
but for a person who has gifts in a different 
direction to diminish the power of doing well 
the work of her special vocation, in order to 
do these other things which some one else can 
do just as well, is to sacrifice the specific in 
the name of serving the general good. 

The man who has large administrative 
business ability, who can direct the industry 
of thousands of people into useful and profit- 
able employment, likewise makes a tremen- 
dous mistake when he burdens himself with 
petty details which he can hire a clerk to do 
for a thousand dollars a year. Keeping 
books and filing away letters and the routine 
of an office are excellent things in themselves, 
the very best things that a great many people 



Deiinition of a Good Man 53 

can do. But when the man of great admin- 
istrative ability spends his time on these petty 
details, he is sacrificing his specific contribu- 
tion to a service which he ought not to render. 

Let each give the best that he can, and let 
no man descend from the best he can do to 
compete with others on any plane below that 
of his own specific excellence. Every man 
who has any artistic, scholarly, administrative 
or financial power above that of the average 
man, is thereby placed under obligation to 
give his whole energy to doing the one thing 
he can do best, and leave all the things that 
other people can do equally well, to be done 
by those other people. So long as there is 
work to be done in the line of one's specific 
capacity and training, it is almost a crime to 
spend time and strength in doing what it is 
possible to hire any one else to do. 

If now we put together our main insight 
and our first two principles, our definition of 
the good man will be. The man who seeks the 
good of all who are affected by his action, 
putting those claims which come nearest to 
him first, and second, those which are in line 
with his specific aptitude and training. 



54 The College to the Church 

The third principle of selection is urgency. 
If the control of events were in our hands and 
we could take our own time to do things, the 
first two principles would be nearly all we 
should need. But the worth of many kinds of 
work depends on its being done at the right 
time. Many things must be done at the time 
they are needed or else they can never be done 
at all. When a house is on fire we cannot 
postpone our efforts to put it out to some 
more convenient season. If a friend is sick, 
we cannot wait until he gets well before pro- 
viding the attendance he needs. When a 
political campaign is at its height we cannot 
postpone our contribution to public discussion 
until we have taken account of stock in our 
store or read the proof-sheets of our treatise. 
We must strike while the iron is hot. We 
must make our hay while the sun shines. 
Hence temporary sacrifice of family life and 
business interests must be cheerfully made, 
and even the most delicate phases of our 
chosen professional work must often be put 
ruthlessly aside, in order to give undivided 
attention to some call of humanity or philan- 



Definition of a Good Man 55 

thropy or country. We must do these things 
in concert with others. When others are 
ready to take hold of them, we must make 
ourselves ready to take hold too. The readi- 
ness to be interrupted is an indispensable 
quality of the wisely good man. 

This readiness to be interrupted, however, 
is a very different thing from having no plan 
at all. Of all the worthless people in the 
world, probably the least useful are those 
who, having no work of their own on hand, 
are ready to fall in with every fad and craze 
that is current. By readiness to be inter- 
rupted we do not mean this passive and empty 
condition of mind. Being interrupted im- 
plies that there is something to interrupt. 
The man who is faithful to our first two prin- 
ciples every day of his life will have on hand 
plans of his own which he is strenuously push- 
ing ahead. Every available hour and minute 
will be devoted to work of this self-chosen 
kind. He will, however, recognize that the 
plan of the world is more important than any 
private plans of his own. He will thrust his 
own plans temporarily into the background in 



S6 The College to the Church 

order to take his part, as need may be, in the 
urgent issues of the day and hour. Such 
readiness to be interrupted is no sign of an 
aimless and purposeless life. It is merely 
the surrender, when occasion demands it, of 
one's private personal aims, to accept the 
larger duties which the movements of human 
society from time to time press upon us. We 
admire the ancient mathematician who was so 
absorbed in his geometrical problems that 
when the city was captured and the soldiers 
came rushing in upon him, he bade them not 
disturb his diagrams. But we should admire 
him more if, so long as his city was besieged, 
he had laid aside his mathematical instru- 
ments and taken his place with javelin and 
spear in defence of his city's walls. The 
best life cannot escape these interruptions and 
would not escape if it could. Woman's life, 
especially, seems to be but one series of inter- 
ruptions, so urgent and pressing are the per- 
sonal claims made upon her. In proportion 
as our lives are enlarged, the amount of in- 
evitable interruption will increase. A man 
at the head of a great institution said to me, 



Definition of a Good Man 57 

not long ago, when I asked him how he stood 
the strain of the work, "It is not the regular 
work that wears on one; it is the unexpected 
things. This institution," he said, "is so big, 
that something fearfully bad happens in it 
every day." 

Putting our main insight and our three 
principles, then, together, we get for our 
definition of the good man. One who wills 
all human good in each choice, but when he 
must choose between what he shall serve and 
shall not, takes : first, the thing that lies near- 
est ; second, the thing for which he has special 
aptitude and training ; and third, is ready to 
lay both these things aside cheerfully and 
promptly, when some urgent call of truth or 
duty or country or wide human welfare must 
be met now or never. 

The fourth principle of choice is size. This 
is one of the more obvious of the principles, 
and one which is most tempting. It is a real 
principle, but yet the last of them all. It is 
better to command a regiment than a com- 
pany; and when the colonel is shot, the lower 
officer must assume command of the regi- 



58 The College to the Church 

ment. This is the principle underlying all 
promotion. A man who can fill a larger 
place, other things being equal, has no right 
to stay in a smaller place. To do so would 
be to prefer a smaller to a larger good ; in 
other words, to prove false to the general 
good altogether. This principle of promo- 
tion applies everywhere ; and nothing is more 
wide of the mark than the criticism which is 
always made upon men when they leave a 
small place for a larger. It is said they are 
actuated by greed for a larger salary or am- 
bition for a greater reputation. All sorts of 
unworthy motives are attributed. Well, a 
small man may make the change from small 
motives, and a selfish man may make the 
change from selfish motives. It is true, 
however, that the good man, who is guided 
by a sincere desire to do all the good he can, 
other things being equal, must take the larger 
place every time. I say, "other things being 
equal" ; for we have already seen that other 
things are far more important. If the larger 
thing is not quite in one's line, if it is too 
large for one's physical strength, then its 



Definition of a Good Man 59 

mere size is no good reason for its acceptance. 
To go back to our first illustrations. The 
fact that the club is larger than the home 
does not constitute a reason why the woman 
should sacrifice home to club. The fact that 
politics is a larger field than business does not 
justify a man in giving up his business alto- 
gether to make politics his sole means of live- 
lihood. To recognize the rightfulness of this 
claim of size, and yet to hold it strictly sub- 
ordinate to the other principles which come 
before, is the fourth mark of goodness in man. 

Putting all we have gained together, we 
get for our definition of the good man, One 
who makes the good of all whom his action 
affects the aim of each choice, and who limits 
the good that he does, first, by the closeness 
of the claim to himself and his family life ; 
second, to the line of his special aptitude and 
training ; third, who turns aside readily to re- 
spond to urgent claims from without ; and, 
fourth, who, so far as he can consistently with 
the foregoing principles, prefers the larger to 
the sm.aller sphere of work. 

Such is our definition of goodness. In 



6o The College to the Church 

sympathy and spirit and purpose, the good 
man is one who works with God in the serv- 
ice of all human good ; yet because he is 
finite, not infinite, because his powers are 
limited, much of the good which he would do 
he is compelled to leave undone; yet he leaves 
it not in indifference, not in hardness of heart, 
not in pride, not in irritation and anger, but 
simply because, being finite, the great mass of 
what he would do he simply must leave un- 
done. And since so much must be left, since 
so little can be done, he is careful to be wise 
in his choosing. He seeks as far as possible 
to do the thing which no one else would do, 
were he to leave it undone ; the thing which 
no one else could do as well, were he to leave 
it for them to do ; the thing which could be 
done at no other time, if not done at the time 
when it comes ; the thing which would be less 
completely and successfully done, were he 
content to be doing some smaller and easier 
task. 

From this rather long and complicated defi- 
nition of the good man or woman we may draw 
three short, clear, practical lessons. 



DeHnition of a Good Man 6r 

First: How clearly Christ stands before us 
as the supremely good man ! His meat and 
drink were the doing of God's universal good 
will. All he did or refrained from doing, 
all his pleasures and joys, all his trials and 
sorrows were sought or accepted as parts of 
his one supreme devotion to God's will for 
man's highest good. From this supreme de- 
votion to God's glory in man's highest good 
no pleasure could allure him away, and no 
pain could turn him aside. Whether he went 
to the Pharisee's feast, or whether he faced 
crucifixion, in each and every case it was 
God's good will for man which he steadfastly 
sought to accomplish. He began with his 
own people and nation, seeking first the lost 
sheep of the house of Israel : and he bade his 
apostles begin their work at Jerusalem. To 
be sure, his work did not permit him to have 
a home of his own. While the foxes had 
holes and the birds of the air had nests, the 
Son of man had not where to lay his head. 
Yet his recorded life begins with filial obedi- 
ence as a child, and one of his last thoughts 
on the cross was to make provision for his 



62 The College to the Church 

mother in the home of his dearest and most 
intimate friend. 

From the outset of his pubHc career, from 
the early struggle in the wilderness on to the 
last scenes at Jerusalem, he firmly refused to 
do what other people expected of him, and 
advised him to do, but held strictly to the 
specific method and mission which his own 
genius marked out for his course. To all so- 
licitations to do aught else, or leave any part 
of this undone, he replied with the stern re- 
buke, "Get thee behind me, Satan." 

Yet he was ever ready to respond to the call 
of the mourner for comfort, or the sick man 
for healing, or the honest inquirer for light, 
or mothers for the blessing of their little chil- 
dren. For it was God's work, not his own, 
he was doing; and the time when a child of 
God needed help was the time he stood ready 
to give it. 

And, lastly, though he began modestly in 
his own little province, and refused to be hur- 
ried into larger spheres before his hour had 
come, yet when the hour came when he must 
choose between a quiet, inoffensive but com- 



Definition of a Good Man 63 

paratively uninfluential life with a little group 
of devoted disciples, or a brief, bitter contest 
with the authorities at the nation's capital, 
then, knowing- that the larger work meant re- 
jection, suffering, death, he set his face 
steadfastly to go up to Jerusalem. This 
Lenten season commemorates the consecra- 
tion and courage of this supremely good man, 
in placing his great work of revelation of God 
and salvation of man on a national, world- 
wide, universal basis, at the cost of his own 
crucifixion. He suffered himself to be lifted 
up because that was the way in which he 
could draw all men unto him, and make his 
work of redemption as wide as the earth and 
as endless as time. 

If we have been correct in our definition of 
the good man, as one who makes God's whole 
will and man's complete good the object of 
his every choice, and who begins in small, in- 
tfmate ways with the few who are nearest 
himself, follows strictly the bent of his gen- 
ius, yet welcomes each offered occasion for 
serving an urgent human need, and, finally, 
throws his whole soul and life into the largest 



64 The College to the Church 

work God gives him to do, then our study is 
but one more confirmation of the moral and 
spiritual perfection of him whom all Chris- 
tians call Lord. 

Second : What a goodly fellowship our 
definition includes ! — the miner who is cheer- 
ful and faithful in the dark ; the sailor who is 
the last to leave the ship that must sink ; the 
soldier who fears not to die at his post ; the 
workman who does his best work whether he 
gets more pay or less ; the employer who cares 
for his workmen as well as his profits ; the 
fathers and mothers who toil early and late 
to give their children the chance they missed 
themselves ; the philanthropist who gives 
time and thought and love with every cent of 
his money ; the reformer who proclaims un- 
popular truths at his own expense ; the peni- 
tent prostitute who would shield young girls 
from her own life of shame ; the man who 
will not treat the daughters or sisters of other 
men as he would resent their treating his 
own; the merchant who gives the money's 
worth in whatever he sells ; the editor who 
makes a paper he is pleased that his children 



Definition of a Good Man 65 

should read ; the lawyer who discourages liti- 
gation; every man and woman in the whole 
wide world — and these men and women num- 
ber millions to-day — who does a work no one 
else could do so well, and takes every chance 
to make the work as useful and large as it 
can be — this is the goodly fellowship our 
definition includes ; this is the true Church of 
Christ ; of such are the kingdom of heaven. 

Third, and lastly: This fellowship with 
Christ and all good men and women in a life 
devoted to all human good, and expressed in 
the wise choice of what is nearest and most 
specific and most urgent and most influen- 
tial, is a fellowship which every man knows 
he ought to join. To love and cherish and 
pray for the good of mankind everywhere is 
not too much to ask of a man who is made in 
the image of God. Neither is it too much 
to ask that out of this universal love we select 
for our actual service what God has placed 
next to us, and given us special fitness for 
doing; what he thrusts in our pathway or 
presses on our immediate attention; and that 
in our ultimate choice we take the largest 



66 The College to the Church 

work that comes in our way, even though for 
us, as for our Master, that larger work take 
the form of a cross. That is what it means 
for us to be good men and women. That is 
what it means to be Christians. Thai is v'hat 
we all know we ought to be. That is what 
Christ will make of us all, if we take his yoke 
upon us and learn the great lesson of his life 
and death. 



Ill 

THE DEVELOPMENT OF A PUBLIC 
CONSCIENCE 

PRESIDENT ARTHUR T. HADLEY_, LL. D. 



THE DEVELOPMENT OF A PUBLIC 
CONSCIENCE 

"A man's life consisteth not in the abundance of 
the things that he possesseth" — Luke 12 : 15. 

In the ordinary meaning which is given to 
this text, we are led to contrast the unimpor- 
tance of mere worldly possessions as com- 
pared with the vastly greater importance of 
the spiritual life. But there is another mean- 
ing, and I believe a truer one — a meaning 
where the emphasis is laid not on the word 
"things," but on the word "possesses;" a 
meaning in which exception is taken to selfish 
ideals of life, however lofty, as compared with 
those wider ideals of the man who works pri- 
marily for others. 

The difference between these two types of 
men is forcibly illustrated in the college 
world. There are among our students two 
sharply distinguished groups ; the men who 
go to college for what they can get out of it, 
and the men who go to college for what they 

69 



70 The College to the Church 

can put into it. Of course there are wide 
variations of character within each of these 
groups. Those who are trying to get what 
they can out of college life fall into various 
methods of self-seeking. One man pursues 
pleasure for the sake of personal enjoyment; 
another pursues athletics for the honor which 
it will bring him as an individual ; a third 
takes up the social organization as a means 
of personal advancement ; a fourth studies for 
rank in his class, and for the honor and ad- 
vantage which that rank will bring; a fifth 
shuts himself out from the world in order to 
live a life which he conceives to be one of self- 
improvement. Yet diverse as are the out- 
ward aims of all these men, they are charac- 
terized by one common error — the error of 
selfishness. The evils of this may be more 
obvious in the lower forms of its manifesta- 
tion than in the higher ones. We see the 
fatuous folly of the man who takes his enjoy- 
ment in eating and drinking and worse kinds 
of self-indulgence. We can condemn the 
short-sightedness of the man who plays for a 
record or who studies for marks. But the 



Development of Public Conscience 71 

higher forms of selfishness, though less obvi- 
ously suicidal than the lower ones, are for 
that reason perhaps all the more dangerous. 
So many a man seems to gain social success 
by its unscrupulous pursuit, or to lay the 
foundations for success in professional life by 
a system of self -development at the expense 
of others, that we sometimes lose sight of the 
effect which this process has in undermining 
character and public spirit. "Virtue," says 
a French writer, "is more dangerous than 
vice, because its excesses are not subject to 
the restraints of conscience." The habit of 
self-improvement furnishes a good example 
of this danger. Just because the individual 
actions to which it leads may be commend- 
able, its devotee loses sight of the evil educa- 
tional effect of doing these things in a wrong 
spirit. 

There is another reason why the higher 
forms of selfishness, as manifested in the col- 
lege life, are worse in their effects than the 
lower forms. The man whose temptations 
lead him to a life of pleasure is, as a rule, one 
whose possibilities of service to the commu- 



72 The College to the Church 

nity are limited. As he goes out into after 
life he finds his power for good and evil alike 
restricted by that mass of conventions with 
which civilization has guarded the doings of 
the ordinary man. But the one whose temp- 
tations to selfishness concern things of the 
spirit is a man who in after life has wider 
possibilities, and who, if he -has started him- 
self in the wrong direction, may lead society 
astray by the wrong exercise of those trusts 
which no law can control, and concerning 
which public sentiment has not as yet learned 
to frame its judgment and exercise its penal- 
ties. 

It is perhaps the greatest excellence of the 
American college that it exercises a powerful 
influence against selfishness, whether physical 
or intellectual, and in favor of the develop- 
ment of a community life. It does not do 
homage to the man who is aiming to make a 
record for himself, whether in athletics or in 
studies. The majority of those who attend 
our universities are ready to enter into the 
spirit of the place, and they demand that their 
fellows shall do the same thing. Man is a 



Development of Public Conscience 73 

political animal ; and the boys entering into a 
group of this kind at an impressionable age 
become part of a close community whose pub- 
lic sentiment and code of ethics take powerful 
hold upon them. This code may be good or 
it may be bad. Usually, under the imperfect 
materials of human character with which we 
have to work, it is a mixture of the two. And 
yet it has this result : that the boy, at a most 
impressionable age, forms a conception of a 
public conscience and a code of honor which 
carries him outside of himself, and which 
leads him to do, not by physical compulsion 
but by the influence of public sentiment, 
things in which consideration of personal con- 
venience and personal advancement are purely 
secondary. 

The college is, in short, a living instance of 
the possibility of developing men out of the 
lower and into the higher ideals of life; out 
of aims which are bounded by self-interest, 
and into those which are inspired by loyalty 
to their fellows and regulated by the sentiments 
and conscience of the community as a whole. 

But what of the world outside of the col- 



74 -^ /"-' College to the Church 

lege — of that larger community, with its 
manifold commercial and political activities, 
for which the college life is but a preparation ? 
Here, too, we find the same division of types. 
There are some who pursue their success self- 
ishly, whether it be in gaining pleasure or po- 
sition, money or office. Side by side with 
them there are others who pursue these ob- 
jects unselfishly; who find their pleasure in 
the pleasure of their fellow men; who gain 
social position as an incident in the improve- 
ment of society ; whose business success is 
obtained by organizing the work of the com- 
munity in such a way as to do good to hun- 
dreds and thousands of others ; whose politic- 
al life is occupied with the exercise of public 
trusts, where personal ambition is at most a 
secondary and incidental element. 

Men are always divided more or less clearly 
into these two types : those who recognize that 
life is a trust, and those who fail so to recog- 
nize it. It happens, however, that with con- 
ditions as they exist at the present day, the 
distinction between the two types is more 
sharply marked than usual. In some ages 



Development of Public Conscience 75 

men have been so bound by rules and tradi- 
tions that he who wished to be selfish was 
compelled to subordinate his own convenience 
to that of the public, while he who was ready 
to be unselfish had but scant opportunity for 
the exercise of his power of serving his fel- 
low men. On the other hand, there are ages 
of liberty, when old conventions are broken 
down and new methods are in process of in- 
troduction. At such times there is an oppor- 
tunity for the self-centered man to misuse a 
freedom which the community has not learned 
to regulate ; and there is corresponding oppor- 
tunity for the public-spirited man to employ 
that same freedom in giving the world new 
enjoyments which were impossible in an ear- 
lier age, and new ideals which will serve to 
regulate its conduct for generations to come. 
It is in such a time as this that we are now 
living. The developments of modern science 
have given new means of enjoyment. The 
breaking up and re-forming of social ties has 
given new opportunities of influence in soci- 
ety. The growth of industrial combination 
on a large scale has freed our commercial 



76 The College to the Church 

leaders from the restraints of competition, 
thereby allowing them an almost unmeasured 
power for good or evil. The growth of im- 
perialistic ideas has extended the sphere of 
action of our politicians and statesmen from 
those domestic problems where they were 
subject to well-defined restraints of constitu- 
tional law, into a field of international deal- 
ings where precedents are undefined, and 
where in default of such precedents the peo- 
ples with whom we come in contact have in- 
adequate opportunities of self -protection. 

This has been called an age of trusts. The 
phrase is applicable in a sense much pro- 
founder than that in which it is generally 
used. Our large industrial monopolies have 
indeed ceased to be corporate trusts in the 
legal sense. No longer is the voting power 
of the stock of the independent companies 
placed in the hands of a common body of 
trustees. The legislation of Congress has 
been sufficient to put a stop to this particular 
form of organization. But it has in no wise 
checked the tendency to combine; and our 
large combinations are become fields for the 



Development of Public Conscience yy 

exercise of a public trust even more than they 
ever were before. The day is past when the 
automatic action of self-interest was sufficient 
to regulate prices, or when a few principles 
of commercial law, straightforwardly applied, 
could secure the exercise of justice in matters 
of trade. The growth of large industries and 
of large fortunes allows their managers to do 
good or evil without adequate restraint from 
law, because all law which is intended to stop 
the evil stops the good even more surely. 
This impossibility of legal control, and the 
necessity which goes with it for unselfish ac- 
tion on the part of those in charge, is what 
constitutes the very essence of a trust, private 
or public. 

The same impossibility and necessity are 
felt in our new matters of foreign policy. We 
cannot, in our legislative halls at Washington, 
attempt strictly to regulate the conduct of 
those who are charged with representing us 
in the Philippine Islands. Our ignorance of 
the conditions in those islands makes all such 
regulation likely to be ineffective or suicidal. 
Of necessity we must leave our representa- 



y8 The College to the Church 

tives in distant countries a freedom which 
permits of abuse, unless we can have some 
control, outside of law and beyond it, which 
shall make them accept their several offices 
as trusts instead of means of gain — using 
every such office not so much for what they 
can get out of it for themselves as for what 
they can put into it for those entrusted to 
their charge. 

But can we hope for the development of a 
sentiment of honor and of such a public spirit 
sufficiently strong to take the place of law? 
To this question we need not hesitate to give 
an affirmative answer. We are indeed pa- 
triotically bound to give this answer. The 
man who shrinks from the problem because 
he does not believe that it can be solved is a 
disbeliever in the future of American democ- 
racy. If our citizens as a body should con- 
fess themselves incompetent to accept public 
trusts because they had not the necessary basis 
of unselfishness, we should be safe in predict- 
ing the coming of an empire at Washington 
in twenty-five years. If the people had not 
the basis of character sufficient for dealing 



Development of Public Conscience 79 

with the affairs entrusted to their charge, the 
power would be taken out of their hands and 
would fall into those of individual leaders. 

But all the evidence goes to show that 
Americans have this necessary basis of moral 
character. Our standard of personal moral- 
ity is on the whole probably higher than 
that of any other nation. Nowhere else do 
we find the same degree of consideration for 
the weak. Nowhere else do we see the same 
sympathy between man and man. Nowhere 
else is the spirit of personal courtesy so wide- 
spread. If we can thus subordinate our in- 
dividual convenience to the needs of others, 
there is no reason why we cannot do the same 
thing in our corporate and our public capaci- 
ties as soon as the necessity is brought home 
to us. The evil is not one of character ; it is 
one of understanding. We are not suffering 
from bad morals but from defective ethics. 
We have been taught to regard business and 
politics as games, to be played by a certain set 
of rules, and with no obligations higher than 
those rules. This may have done very well 
in the old times, when business was so small 



8o The College to the Church 

that competition set a limit to arbitrary con- 
duct, and when political activity was kept 
within such a narrow sphere that the re- 
straints of constitutional law and of repre- 
sentative government were sufficient checks 
upon abuse of power. But when the Ameri- 
can people see that new conditions make these 
restraints inadequate, and demand the volun- 
tary assumption of self-restraint and self- 
sacrifice, they can be trusted to apply in the 
new and complicated problems which are be- 
fore us that same subordination of individual 
convenience to public good which is at once 
the fundamental characteristic of a gentleman 
and the fundamental necessity of a leader who 
would claim the right to administer a trust in 
behalf of the weak. 

That we shall learn these lessons may be in- 
ferred from the experience of England in 
handling her colonial empire and in dealing 
with the peoples that are subject to it. There 
was a time when England's administration in 
India was worse than ours is likely to be in any 
country that comes under our charge ; a time 
when men of standing and character, like 



Development of Public Conscience 8i 

Hastings or even like Clive, allowed them- 
selves to be led far astray. But these days 
are long gone by. Whatever may be the de- 
fects of English colonial rulers, it nevertheless 
remains true that they take up their work in a 
spirit of devotion to those who are entrusted 
to their charge ; and that the whole sentiment, 
at home and abroad, is such as to stimulate 
good conduct and prevent abuse far more ef- 
fectively than could be done by any system of 
legislation, however well devised. What 
England has learned in the last century 
America can unquestionably learn in the open- 
ing years of the coming one. 

We have seen how our colleges give their 
men a training in just this sort of public spirit 
which is so necessary to our welfare as a 
nation. What the colleges do in early life 
I believe that the Church can help to do in af- 
ter life. The importance and the feasibility 
of this development of public spirit seems to 
me the great message of the college to the 
Church at the present day. This is an age 
when our churches are looking earnestly for a 
mission. In this field they have one directly 



VI 



82 The College to the Church 

before them. We are in the midst of difficul- 
ties that cannot be checked by law — difficul- 
ties that grow greater as the years go on. In- 
dividual efforts at reform seem helpless and 
hopeless. We need a sound public opinion 
to meet them. We must have large bodies 
of men who individually and collectively will 
accept and insist upon the principle that we 
are members one of another. The socialist 
indeed preaches this principle already ; but 
by his reliance on governmental machinery 
for its enforcement he shows that he has lit- 
tle understanding of what it really means. In 
the Christian Church we have an organization 
that is committed to this idea, and which, un- 
like the socialists, is committed to its applica- 
tion from the right end — making it a duty 
which each individual will impose upon him- 
self rather than a burden which he tries to im- 
pose upon others. Let us not content our- 
selves with preaching sermons on personal 
morality which are based on principles that 
the bulk of good men now accept, whether in 
the Christian Church or out of it. Let us not 
even content ourselves with going into the 



Development of Public Conscience 83 

work of social settlements and other things 
intended to give a little more light to those 
who walk in darkness. These are all good 
in their way; but they only touch the very 
fringe of the social problem. To meet that 
problem our churches must find a way of unit- 
ing the people in a sentiment of self-devotion 
to ideals outside of themselves. This cannot 
be done by mere words. It cannot be done 
by specific remedies for individual evils. It 
can be done only by awakening a public con- 
science. For this work we need men in- 
spired by high ideals of duty and understand- 
ing at the same time the conditions under 
which modern duty is done. We need to 
find men who can organize our sentiment on 
such a scale that the influence which the col-, 
lege in a small way exercises upon its mem- 
bers shall be made effective in the life of the 
nation as a whole. For leaders who are able 
to do this, and for a church that is ready to 
work under such leaders, there is room in 
America to-day as there never was before. 
When once this lesson of public trust shall 
have been learned, we shall have reunited 



84 The College to the Church 

Church and State, not by those material bonds 
which proved so destructive to them both, 
but by a spiritual bond which may come near- 
er than ever before toward realizing the 
Christian ideal of the Church universal. 



IV 

THE COLLEGE AND THE HOME 

PRESIDENT FRANKLIN CARTER, LL, D. 



THE COLLEGE AND THE HOME 

The New England college is largely the 
product of religious enthusiasm. The 
earliest colleges, humble as they were, were 
the offspring of faith in God and faith in 
man as worthy and able to know Him, his 
works and his dealings with humanity, 
as well as man's own achievements and 
searches after true good. They were the 
creation of the Church, primarily for the 
Church, but also for the State as a divine in- 
stitution ordained by God. If the West- 
minster Catechism represented more perfectly 
the age of the birth and early growth of these 
colleges, their most ardent friends still believe 
that the motto of Harvard, "For Christ and 
the Church," expresses more correctly than 
any later formula the meaning of their mis- 
sion. They believe that these words have 
the widest significance, that what is for Christ 
is for the ideal and divine man ; that what is 
for the Church is for men and women strug- 



87 



88 The College to the Church 

gling after that ideal, and that every college 
and every university reasonably meeting the 
demands for fine training does, even if not 
unfurling that distinctive banner so fully as 
it might, under the power of Christ to-day, 
cooperate with those which do unfurl that 
legend and work constantly in the recognition 
of its sublime and supreme importance as an 
end. Just as surely to-day as two hundred 
years ago, the New England college should 
stand for the enthronement of Christ in the 
hearts and minds of those whom it educates 
and through them in the hearts and minds of 
other men and women in the world. The 
colleges in this important way should in- 
fluence the thought of the time, but they are 
themselves largely affected by the thought 
and activities of the period. In an age of 
wonderful scientific achievement, an age of 
devotion of the highest talent and intensest 
energy to business and commerce largely as 
a result of the applications of science to pro- 
duction and distribution, an age of the fiercest 
competition, an age which needs above all 
things the conservative sanitary restraints of 



The College and the Home 89 

spiritual conceptions and ideals, there is dan- 
ger that those frequenting the colleges may 
lose something of that steady allegiance to 
eternal truth, of that supreme faith in the 
supremacy of goodness and redemption by vi- 
carious suffering that marked a quieter age. 
A boy growing up in the atmosphere of a 
home where the agitations of modern busi- 
ness leave little time for the personal inter- 
change of thought and affection, and the con- 
templation by the family of religious truth, 
will scarcely carry to his college the true per- 
spective of temporal and eternal realities. 
Many such boys entering a college at once 
will be pretty likely to smother for some 
others the finer aspirations in an atmosphere 
of worldliness. Is it not true that the intense 
devotion to business in the present time does 
imperil in the home those finer sentiments, 
the growth of those wiser perceptions and 
tender emotions, the full expression of that 
faith sorely needed to lead the boys and girls 
into a persistent loyalty to Christ and his 
ethics, to the cross and its sacrifice? If the 
manifest end of all this effort and agitation of 



90 The College to the Church 

life is only to accumulate dollars that are not 
held as a trust for God and humanity, but 
held either for selfish enjoyment or display, 
or, worse yet, for the pleasure of the miser's 
clutch, can wc expect that our boys and girls 
under such influences will get a clear grasp of 
the fundamental principles of Christianity, 
will come into a living devotion to the suf- 
fering Christ? 

In another way the home is in this time ex- 
posed to loss. An acute writer has said 
"that the family has not been strengthened 
but rather weakened by the sociological 
tendency of the age whose drift is to set forth 
humanity as one great whole." Certainly in 
some families where the materialism of the 
age does not thwart the sacred mission of the 
home, which is to train children into the very 
life of Christ, the distracting effects of too 
many outside activities, of membership in too 
many societies, most of which exist for good 
purposes, may leave little time for the inter- 
change with one's children of thoughtful 
words on the personal relations to God and 
Christ. It is a period of much bustle, of 



Tke College and the Home 91 

hurrying hither and thither, of health-seeking 
in different cHmes, of marvelous reductions of 
time and space, and, one may admit, of mag- 
nificent opportunities for consecrated men to 
serve the Master. Never were such huge 
gatherings of Christian men and women as 
we see to-day; never were such vast spaces 
of territory traversed that Christians might 
get their hearts softened by pentecostal in- 
fluences ; never were there so many organi- 
zations, conventions, conferences, congresses, 
retreats, all for the development in those who 
attend these unions and through them 
in others of the Christian life. Nor is it all 
in vain ; but have we not yet learned that the 
kingdom of God cometh not by observation ? 
Are not the words of the great Bushnell, pub- 
lished over fifty years ago, even more ap- 
plicable to the Christian life of to-day than 
to that of his generation? "With all our 
activities and boldness of movement there is 
a certain hardness and rudeness, a want of 
sensibility to things which do not lie in ac- 
tion, which cannot be too much deplored or 
too soon rectified. We hold a piety of con- 



92 The College to the Church 

quest rather than of love, a kind of public 
piety that is strenuous and fiery on great oc- 
casions, but wants the beauty of holiness, 
wants constancy, singleness of aim, loveli- 
ness, purity, richness, blamelessness and, if I 
may add another term not so immediately re- 
ligious, but one that carries by association a 
thousand religious qualities, wants domestic- 
ity of character." In a truly Christian 
home, Christ must be regnant as a sovereign 
over the father and mother not on certain im- 
portant solemn occasions but at all times, and 
through this continued and recognized pres- 
ence over all the others, bending them by love 
into submission both to parental and divine 
authority. It may not be true, as an eminent 
professor in a great university has recently 
affirmed, that "the young men of to-day do 
not feel their responsibility as the young men 
of a generation ago ;" but is it not true that 
the primary call in the Church of to-day is for 
the Christian home to attain to its ideal util- 
ity and ideal beauty as a training-place for all 
the children into an appreciation of the im- 
measurable superiority of the things eter- 



The College and the Home 93 

nal over the things temporal and the joyful 
acceptance of self-denial for the sake of others 
in the home ; into such graces and aptitudes 
as shall lead them imperceptibly but surely 
into the Church ; into the noblest sense of re- 
sponsibility and fullest service to others? If 
the home is composed of equal units, if there 
are no gradations of honor and authority, if 
each member does what is right in his own 
eyes to the neglect of the rest, will not rever- 
ence be a dwarfed and stunted product, or 
even be reduced to a rudimentary virtue? 

I think the college may rightly appeal to 
the Christian home and the Christian Church 
for a hearty cooperation in this matter of 
reverence. The old conception under which 
our fathers lived exalted the authority of God. 
Emphasis laid on the decrees of God, on pre- 
destination, on his will sometimes to the actual 
destruction of man's freedom, has given place 
to the exaltation of God's reason and his love. 
That this has been an immense gain in the 
conflict with scientific unbelief and in the pre- 
sentation of the purest Theism there can be 
no doubt, but that "the will of God eternally 



94 The College to the Church 

in harmony with his reason" is still will, still 
retains authority over all the thoughts and 
feelings of men, still commands with the 
majesty of omnipotence and that disobedience 
to this authority still entails ruin, we some- 
times forget and rarely enforce. If we dwell 
chiefly on his condescension and pity as re- 
vealed in the incarnation and life of Christ, if 
as the world with the new scientific inven- 
tions becomes a great whispering gallery, and 
the notes of sorrow constantly reach us from 
all sides of the globe and daily appall us so 
that we must steady ourselves by repeating 
and claiming that "God is love," we must not 
forget that the everlasting "I am" is not less 
on the throne because he is also on the cross. 
If we hold that our wills are free in a larger 
and nobler sense than was held by the New 
England preachers two centuries or even half 
a century ago, it is not necessary, but it is 
perhaps natural, that we lose something of 
that reverence for the divine will which in al- 
most pantheistic breadth seemed to our fa- 
thers to embrace and underlie all human activi- 
ties. 



The College and the Home 95 

Whatever may be the cause, it cannot, I 
think, be questioned that the expression of 
reverence for God's authority and sover- 
eignty has decHned, I will not say in con- 
gregational worship, but in New England 
generally, and that into modern society and 
the colleges has come, with boys even from 
New England families, an indifference to the 
expression of reverence and a carelessness 
with regard to sacred things not so apparent 
fifty years ago. Some of the changes in 
modern education have encouraged the 
tendency to irreverence. I will not deny that 
these changes were called for by the condi- 
tions of the time, but it is true, I think, that 
reverence and acceptance of authority are 
qualities less conspicuous among young men 
than fifty years ago. There is nothing more 
beautiful than reverence; nothing more en- 
nobling than the Puritan virtue of obedience. 

Does not the family exist to develop in the 
sons and daughters the respect for obedience, 
an appreciation of the beauty of reverence 
and worship, the significance of self-denial, 
and through these qualities the supreme worth 



96 The College to the Church 

of cooperation for noble ends? Was not the 
family designed to be an organic unity ; the 
home a place where tender authority and rev- 
erence, the fear of God as well as the love of 
God, that fear which is and ever must be "the 
beginning of wisdom" should make the at- 
mosphere? Why do boys come from Chris- 
tian homes who think reverence is servile and 
mistake wilfulness for manliness? Is the 
home, instead of being the nursery of loving 
thoughts and gratitude to God, a place where- 
in forgetfulness of God, querulous com- 
plaints, derogation of neighbors, censure for 
the minister, envy of the rich, craze for dis- 
play, constantly excite the sensitive nerves of 
the growing boy or girl ? In this equal 
country, where speech is free and criticism 
general, where the loftiest responsibilities and 
anxieties seem sometimes rather to invite dis- 
trust than to command sympathy, there may 
be especial need that from the home censor- 
ious faultfinding be excluded. But what- 
ever ought to be, certain it is that the colleges 
contain many young men quite ready to 
judge hastily and harshly, and not backward 



The College and the Home 97 

about expressing such judgments even in the 
earHer years. 

Nothing is more beautiful than family pray- 
er. Even in homes where imperfect sympa- 
thies and jarring diversities exist, I hope it 
would tend to keep in check the miserable ex- 
pressions of selfish life. But family prayer 
maintained with rigid formality in a home 
where certain currents of thought and expres- 
sion flow unrestrained may send a boy out 
into the world not merely with indifference, 
but positive dislike for formal religious ser- 
vices. Such processes are going on, 
and going on in spite of the ever in- 
creasing honor that is paid to Christ by the 
nobler thinkers of the age. He stands forth 
as never before illustrating the love of God 
and throwing the splendor of that love over 
all creation's travail ; as never before exhib- 
iting the loftiest perfections of human char- 
acter, teaching the meaning and the glory of 
voluntary suffering; and yet, may we not ask, 
are Christian homes showing not more but 
less appreciation of the great secret of his 
life, that only he that loses his life shall find 
it unto life eternal? 



vii 



98 The College to the Church 

When Bushnell uttered his historic and 
prophetic warning that the home, the Chris- 
tian home, must be the nursery of Christian 
Hving, was it more needed than it is to-day? 
Are not the influences that envelop and per- 
meate the lives of our boys and girls in the 
fermenting period of adolescence more di- 
verse and more bewildering than they were a 
quarter of a century ago? Have we not seen 
in the college an almost total disappearance of 
revival epochs, and are we not far surer than 
we were that the character which a boy or girl 
brings to the college will be strengthened and 
deepened, not greatly changed, in the years of 
college life? If finer examples of Christian 
manhood have never been seen in the Ameri- 
can college than in the last decade, will not 
those who have known them bear witness to 
the fact that from the first day of their col- 
lege life to the last day they bore upon them 
the seal and influence of Christian training 
in a Christian home? Exceptions there may 
be, but the excitements of college life, the 
greater luxury, the intenser intellectual and 
physical competitions, the absence of quiet 



<«► 



The College and the Home 99 

months for calm reflection, leave less op- 
portunity for admitting all at once the 
gracious authority of the still, small voice. 
God forbid that I should limit the power of 
his spirit; God forbid that I should intimate 
that there may not be, nay, will not be in the 
future, religious revivals of power in our col- 
leges. 

Through what alternatives of spiritual 
desolation and refreshment his Church is 
to pass no one can foresee, but the natur- 
al, the normal place for young people to 
learn to rejoice in the companionship of God 
as manifested in Christ is in the home, and 
the normal process is by the loving influence 
of mothers and fathers, and more and more, 
I think, it will be true that only those thus 
trained will wholly consecrate themselves to 
the divine Christ. Was it ever fitting that 
a boy and girl trained in a Christian home 
should wait for a social convulsion in which 
to begin to follow Christ ; should be trained 
in the idea that the loving grace of God is not 
always operative, that the acceptance of Christ 
as a Saviour is not a duty from the date of 
L.efC. 



lOO The College to the Church 

the first consciousness of sin? If it ever was 
fitting under the conception that a man can do 
nothing, and God must do everything to bring 
him into the kingdom, when and where and 
how he will, it is no longer fitting. We may 
believe that revivals still have their place in 
God's economy and that some will be brought 
into the kingdom in the time of refreshing 
who would not otherwise come. But in the 
increasing complexity and intensity of 
modern life there is new reason for emphasiz- 
ing the supreme value of home training in all 
the formative years ; for exalting the ef- 
ficiency of an embracing love and wisdom ; 
for believing that the babe in the mother's 
arms may open intelligence to the presence 
and love of God, and that the future of the 
college and hence of the Church and of the 
State depends as truly as ever primarily on the 
fidelity with which, year in and year out for 
fifteen, eighteen, or twenty years. Christian 
fathers and Christian mothers flood the lives 
of their beloved with Christian light and 
Christian love. The Christian home is the 
normal place in which to anchor a soul in God. 



The College and the Home loi 

We do not hold that every Christian col- 
lege graduate should go into the clerical pro- 
fession, though I hope that we all hold that 
every Christian should be a minister of Christ. 
It is, however, not without significance that 
from our best colleges and universities so few 
in these days become distinctive ministers of 
the gospel. I have recently examined the 
catalogue of a great university and counted 
the ministers in the five classes from 1890 to 
1894, inclusive. There were thirty-two out 
of a total of nine hundred and twenty-two 
Bachelors of Arts; 3>4 per cent. Then I 
turned back forty years to the five classes be- 
ginning with 1850, and found out of a total 
of four hundred and seventy-five graduates, 
one hundred ordained ministers of the gos- 
pel; 21 per cent; six and one-half times as 
many fifty years ago as ten years ago. An 
equal, I fear a greater, decline in per cent will 
be found to mark the smaller colleges which 
half a century ago were the great source of 
candidates for the ministry. It is not pos- 
sible that the diminution in the number of 
those ablest and best equipped students who 



102 The College to the Church 

consecrate themselves to the Christian min- 
istry has its chief origin in the college. It 
is in the time, in the conditions which affect 
the home as well as the college. I cannot be- 
lieve that there is less loyalty to the Master 
now than fifty years ago, but I suspect that 
there is need of greater wisdom for the prob- 
lem of training boys and girls, complicated as 
it is by problems that were not serious, by 
forces that were not potent half a century ago. 
It seems to me that this loyalty is much less, 
far too little, concentrated in the home ; that 
it is expressed more by the philanthropic and 
benevolent work of the time ; and that, where- 
as this may be desirable, there will be much 
empty talk, much idle running hither and yon, 
unless the fountain of home piety is pure and 
undefiled, and the supreme effort be directed 
to the Christian nurture of all the young life 
within its circle. It is possible that our piety 
is more one of love, of general comprehensive 
love, than when Bushnell wrote ; but that it 
shines brighter in the home or pervades it 
more warmly, contemplates with more stead- 
iness tlie first duty of training children in 



The College and the Home 103 

faith, may not be true. One still sees beauti- 
ful homes, homes where faith glows in the 
keen eyes of the children and answers the 
smile of the positive but loving father ; where 
the mother is the acknowledged and beloved 
center of all activities ; where God's Word and 
truth seem to govern every thought; where 
every voice is heard in the Lord's Prayer ; 
where central authority governs with but lit 
tie sign of authority ; where self-denial is 
taught by every movement ; where the peace of 
heaven is undisturbed by the conflicts of a 
selfish world, except that each child is taught 
that the blessing of a Christian home is to 
make him or her ready to relieve the suffering 
and help the struggling when the time comes. 
These are the homes which make the noblest 
college friendships possible, and the largest 
attainments certain. 

Let no college in these days boast that a 
larger percentage of its graduates is going 
into the ministry than from some other col- 
lege. The influences in the colleges are more 
similar, more identical than once. That a 
larger percentage study theology in any year 



I04 The College to the Church 

or in any decade from one New England col- 
lege than from another or, if that be possible, 
from the graduates of one college now than 
formerly, means probably that for a year or 
for ten years a larger percentage of boys have 
come into that college from homes where the 
Christian nurture was potent and irresistible, 
and followed the boys through the entire col- 
lege life. Making all allowance for the new 
careers which the adaptations of science have 
opened and for the new charms which these 
adaptations have given to old professions, 
making all allowance for the difficulties which 
we are told discourage candidates for the min- 
istry, it is not to the honor of Christ's Church, 
nor is it altogether creditable to our Christian 
homes, that the noblest profession, the pro- 
fession that furnishes the largest opportunity 
to follow the Christ whom we honor and to 
enter into the fellowship of his redemptive 
suffering and to attain the divinest manhood, 
secures so few of those who have the most to 
lay at his feet. 

Many have been reading the biography of 
the most efficient minister of this generation. 



The College and the Home 105 

Some who used to wonder at his power, for he 
seemed so unique and so lofty as to suggest 
no genesis, and in a measure so broad as to 
suggest no affinities, have found the bio- 
graphy worthy of the man. To learn that 
this transcendently useful and transcendently 
beautiful life had its origin in a Christian 
home was inevitable. The glimpses that we 
get of that home seem to make his wonderful 
life a little less mysterious. May I read you 
a sentence or two? "In this family where 
Phillips Brooks grew up, the nobler aspect of 
family life was predominant and unsullied ; 
the father and the mother ruling with dili- 
gence and unquestioned authority, while be- 
neath their authority was the eternal princi- 
ple of self-sacrifice, till they seemed to live 
only for the welfare of the children. It need 
hardly be said that this was a religious family. 
The usage of family prayer was religiously 
observed in the morning before going forth to 
the work of the day, and again in the evening 
at nine o'clock. This home for the children 
was interesting, but not monotonous or dull. 
The boys did not fret at exclusions from 



io6 The College to the Church 

richer interests outside, nor long to escape the 
narrow routine. The home became to the 
children their choicest treasure to which they 
fondly reverted in after years when its diviner 
meaning was more apparent." Home in- 
fluence made Brooks' college and seminary 
life productive and noble. Dr. Vinton says 
of him "that he was made by his mother." 
That is, of course, only partially true, but the 
beautiful words of Brooks himself written 
just after her death may be accepted without 
reservation : "My mother has been the cen- 
ter of all the happiness of my life : thank God 
she is not less my pride and treasure now." 
We may all thank God that there has been one 
such fertile Christian home in this city, and 
one such superb efflorescence from its soil. 
Remember, he had three brothers who entered 
the Christian ministry. Some of us are per- 
haps too far along to study that record with 
reference to the training of our own children, 
but it is quite worth while for any parents 
with young children to make the traces in that 
book of home influence the subject of the 
deepest study. "How she loved to talk to us 



The College and the Home 107 

of Henry Martyn," wrote Phillips Brooks from 
India to one of his brothers. That was a 
mother whose zeal for foreign missions filled 
the home with the breadth and beauty of 
Christ's love for a dying world, and from that 
quiet fireside stirred English-speaking people 
of every rank from the Queen to the shop-girl 
all over the world to better living, to nobler 
imitation of the suffering Christ, through her 
beloved son. With the increasing wealth of 
the Church, with the increasing power of edu- 
cation and the increasing honor that sound 
doctrine pays to the suffering Christ, are we 
not to see, not here and there a poor young 
graduate asking a society to let him carry the 
good news to perishing races, but bands of 
well-educated young men going with their 
own inherited wealth to found settle- 
ments and build hospitals and schools 
in the populous centers of the Orient? 
Not to compete with, but to cooperate with 
missions already established and living and 
dying with and for the degraded ones to show 
that at last under the leadership of the cruci- 
fied Redeemer some from American Christian 



io8 The College to the Church 

homes zvith riches make a glorious entrance 
into the kingdom of God. 

To be the mother of a PhilHps Brooks, a 
James Hannington, or a Reginald Heber; tq 
be the father of an Adoniram Judson, a David 
Scudder or a John Paton ; is there any comfort 
or joy or splendor that can rest on any Chris- 
tian home comparable to the knowledge that 
a son has entered into such a fellowship with 
the Master? It is in such lives that college 
and Church reach the zenith of their glory, but 
it is in the Christian home that such lives must 
take their impulse ; in the Christian home that 
the heart must be so filled with and the eye so 
fixed upon Christ, the true goal, that love for 
men and women shall at last know no bounds. 
Martineau says : "As your child leaps into 
your arms, you embrace him less for what he 
is than for what he is to be. You see in him 
the casket of immortal powers whose 
guardian you are to be under the eye of God." 
Who will limit the attainments of the bright- 
eyed boy whose beauty and candor seem mar- 
velous, who looks into your face with tender 
glance, who searches the depth of your being 



The College and the Home 109 

with his question? You consecrate him to 
the care and service of God. It does not seem 
reasonable that a boy growing up in the brac- 
ing atmosphere of love, hope, patience, in 
whose heart Christian faith has taken root, 
should lose in college his faith in the Master, 
if it has been a genuine growth in the years at 
home. There may not be behind him the 
ancestry of a Brooks or a Heber, but God with 
you can make of his earthly life a glorious 
service; a truly Christian home can send a 
boy to college to be an attractive and mo- 
mentous force for good for all who know 
him ; to be cheerful, but not flippant ; gen- 
tle, but not compromising; loving, but not 
yielding; pure, but not austere; reverent 
among the careless, serious among the friv- 
olous, and studious among the distracted, self- 
denying among the self-indulgent. Why 
should he ever lose the consciousness that he 
is the child of God? Why should he not at 
last reach the lofty height of some of those 
whose names always bring back to us the 
thought of God as dwelling and working in 
and exalting a human soul, and thus blessing 
all the world? 



no The College to the Church 

If the loss comes, if the boy grows cold and 
hard and indifferent before or after entering 
college, too often the remembrance of certain 
scenes awaken in the parent's mind a deeper 
pathos. Recalling the expression of too 
much anxiety, too much depression, too much 
sensitiveness, too little confidence, will not the 
thought sometimes rise : "Oh, that I had 
been able to control my feeling; to show 
peace and joy instead of fear; to measure 
words with greater accuracy ; to encourage 
the good in him rather than to be discouraged 
by the evil, rather than to have him feel that I 
expected little good !" There are, I suppose, 
instances withm the circle of our acquaintance 
where the life and thought of a profligate or 
agnostic son is in startling contrast to the con- 
spicuous and even distinguished service to the 
kingdom of God rendered by a father. The 
strange threads of heredity, the almost impos- 
sible coordination of certain ancestral forces, 
the quiet but imperious voices of past 
lapses, God wall make all just allowance 
for these things in us and others who 
we fear are lacking in true Christian 



Tlie College and the Home m 

fatherhood and motherhood. But shall 
we not all agree that the holiest, loftiest suc- 
cess in life is that enjoined by these relations; 
that no failure in all the reach of effort or 
knowledge can be compared to that which 
may be unfolded within the circle of a Chris- 
tian home? Oh, the dull perceptions, the 
misapprehensions, the strange oversights, the 
hasty judgments, the rasping words of loving, 
anxious, even self-denying parents ! In this 
age when so many outside allurements make 
it so easy for boys and girls to neglect the 
home, what need of steady patience, of gentle 
confidence, of wise, tender thoughts, of de- 
light in sacrifice, of supreme love for the Mas- 
ter that the unconscious influence through 
God's grace may soften the effect of mistakes 
in judgment and action, and make the home 
an attractive center of piety and love! This 
is after all the true secret, the full studious 
companionship with the mind of Christ; not 
any series of carefully directed injunctions or 
entreaties ; not formal prohibitions or re- 
quirements ; no elaborate system of rewards 
and punishments ; no cunning psychology of 



112 The College to the Church 

child-life ; no complicated method, but a heart 
that throbs with warm love for the Master's 
sinlessness and sacrifice, and invests loving 
self-denial with heavenly beauty, that throbs 
as his did with tenderest sympathy for the 
helplessness and wonder of the child and dif- 
fuses the radiance of a cheerful, hopeful, hap- 
py, wise spirit, and never clouds with harsh 
and stormy utterance "the heaven that lies 
about us in our infancy." 

I must end. Let me repeat here from the 
Old Testament perhaps the finest expression 
in all literature of the reasonable pride of a 
fatlier over the pure and honorable life of a 
son. V\'e may see how language is strained 
to utter the transcendent joy, the prophetic 
rapture that rises tumultuously in the father's 
mind over the boy's pure, sweet, manly and 
heroic life. "Joseph is a fruitful bough, even 
a fruitful bough by a well ; whose branches 
run over the wall : the archers have sorely 
grieved him, and shot at him, and hated him: 
but his bow abode in strength, and the arms 
of his hands were made strong by the hands 
of the miq-hty God of Jacob; (from thence is 



The College and the Home 113 

the shepherd, the stone of Israel:) even 
by the God of thy father, who shall help thee ; 
and by the Almighty, who shall bless thee 
with blessings of heaven above, blessings of 
the deep that lieth under, blessings of the 
breasts, and of the womb: the blessings of 
thy father have prevailed above the blessings 
of my progenitors unto the utmost bound of 
the everlasting hills : they shall be on the head 
of Joseph, and on the crown of the head of 
him that was separate from his brethren." 

The college has a grave responsibility for 
the guidance and development of the moral 
life of those entrusted to it — a responsibility 
which I fear many instructors do not proper- 
ly feel (college management has many perils 
to-day) — but to-night, as I address those who 
represent the collection of Christian homes 
that make the Church, let me reiterate that it 
is impossible for the college teachers to re- 
verse the bent of a life fixed in the home. It 
is only possible for God. Let me urge you 
then so to surround with the sweetest poten- 
cies of Christ's love and holiness that boy who 
is to be the educated and influential man of 



vni 



114 The College to the Church 

the future that in the temptations and conflicts 
of college and later life, "when the archers 
sorely grieve him and shoot at him," his bow 
may abide "in strength and his hands be made 
strong by the hands of the mighty God of 
Jacob," that possibly like Joseph, the mission- 
ary statesman, he may be a blessing to multi- 
tudes, and multitudes may consciously or un- 
consciously thank God for the Christian train- 
ing that surrounded him in his boyhood's 
home. 



V 

THE MUTUAL DEPENDENCE OF 

THE COLLEGE AND THE 

CHURCH 

PRESIDENT GEORGE HARRIS, LL. D. 



THE MUTUAL DEPENDENCE OF 
THE COLLEGE AND THE 
CHURCH 

The Church and the college were in this 
country from the beginning. A few years 
passed, indeed, before the first college was 
actually established, but the ministers 
who came over from England were university 
men, as were some of the laymen. In Eng- 
land these institutions had long stood side by 
side, so that the streams of culture and re- 
ligion were flowing from the time our English 
ancestors landed at Plymouth. 

The early colleges of New England, and 
also the later ones, were founded with a re- 
ligious purpose which found expression in 
their charters and seals. The principal ob- 
ject of some of them was the education of 
ministers, although none were confined to 
that. The Church founded colleges to pro- 
mote broad and liberal education. The col- 
leges always had, however, an independent 



117 



Ii8 The College to the Church 

existence and were not under the control of 
the Church, although a certain proportion of 
the trustees of some colleges must be clergy- 
men. 

Since Church and college are distinct as in- 
stitutions, the relations existing between them 
can be measured and their influence upon each 
other estimated, as comparison can be made 
between Church and State, or between State 
and family. Although the very same person 
may be in both institutions, yet each stands 
for something characteristic, and each con- 
tributes something to the other. If the re- 
lation of the college to the State were to be 
considered, little would be said about religion, 
for the relations are not exclusively nor pre- 
dominantly religious. When one considers 
the mutual dependence of the college and the 
Church, it is from the religious point of view, 
for the Church is exclusively a religious so- 
ciety. Our inquiry pertains, then, to the giv- 
ing and receiving of each from the other in 
respect to religion. 

We will not go over the entire history of 
the colleges and universities of Christendom 



Mutual Dependence 119 

in this aspect, but will take our own period 
only, to note changes of thought, faith and 
life which have occurred within the recollec- 
tion of nearly all of us, changes due in part to 
the higher education which, while it has af- 
fected, has at the same time been affected by 
vital Christianity preached and practiced in 
the churches. After tracing these influences 
of knowledge and belief, I shall speak of an 
educated ministry. 

In considering the college in relation to the 
Church, we think first of widening knowledge 
in its effect upon religious beliefs and life. 
Although belief and life cannot be sharply 
separated, yet emphasis can be laid now on 
one, now on the other. 

Knowledge of the physical universe, which 
has teen presented in the college, has un- 
doubtedly had a considerable effect upon re- 
ligious beliefs. As the enormous extension 
of the spatial world, perceived by astronomy, 
influenced man's conception of God, by re- 
ducing the earth to insignificance, yet ulti- 
mately exalted the God of a universe compre- 
hended by human reason as under law ; so il- 



120 The College to the Church 

limitable extension of the time in which life 
on the earth has been slowly developing from 
lower to higher forms, perceived by geology 
and biology, for a time bade fair to reduce 
man to a mere animal, of the earth, earthy, 
and to threaten belief in the existence of God, 
only later to exalt man as the crown of the 
culminating process, and to magnify the 
power and wisdom of God, to whom a thou- 
sand years are as one day, who is from ever- 
lasting to everlasting. The real interest of 
scientific discovery was its bearing on concep- 
tions of God and man. It could no longer be 
held that God has worked from the outside by 
special interventions, nor that man was called 
into being by a sudden, independent creation. 
Yet there really was no loss, but, rather, a 
gain; for a God who works within and is 
working even until now is greater than a God 
who did his work from outside and finished 
it long ago. The theory of evolution, in- 
stead of removing God to an inconceivable 
distance, brought him near. It is seen that 
the derivation of man from animals is as con- 
sistent with a purpose as is his separate, in- 



Mutual Dependence 121 

stantaneous, recent creation ; indeed, more 
consistent with purpose. A universe advanc- 
ing- from inorganic to organic, from matter to 
life, from plant and animal to rational creat- 
ures able to discern the vast movement and 
capable of unlimited self-improvement is not 
accident nor blind necessity, but is best under- 
stood as a purpose, not interjected into a 
meaningless universe, but interwoven into its 
very fiber, into the warp made for the woof, 
and showing a wondrous pattern. And every 
one now sees that the conditions under which 
man became what he is do not make him other 
than he is. He is a creature of intelligence, 
reason, sense of obligation, consciousness of 
God, expectation of immortality. The fact 
that man is organically related to the pro- 
longed process is accepted without question, 
but the difference of man from other orders, 
the uniqueness of man in intellectual, moral, 
spiritual endowments, is recognized also. 

If we could imagine adults who had never 
seen infants and had completely forgotten 
their own childhood, and then should bring a 
baby among them and should assert that every 



122 TIic College to the Church 

one of them was once just such a creature, un- 
able to walk or speak or understand, the as- 
tonishment and resentment would be no less 
than ours when we were told that we descend, 
or ascend, from animals — perhaps more, be- 
cause from baby to man is only a score of 
years, while from animal to man is thou- 
sands of centuries. When the fact became in- 
disputable, they might at first conclude that 
adults are still babies, but ere long, the dif- 
ferences being patent, would perceive that 
there are wonderful, mysterious potencies in 
babies, since they do become men and women. 
Just such reasoning and just such final con- 
clusion has followed from evolution. The 
difference between the most intelligent br.ute 
and the least intelligent man is radical. No 
wonder the time has been long, the differences 
are so great. Only differences of degree, 
indeed, but a million of them ; and we know 
that a sufficient difference of degree amounts 
to a difference in kind. 

It is also seen that evolution itself is not 
one simple process, working in the same iden- 
tical way with all orders, but that peculiar fac- 



Mutual Dependence 123 

tors are concerned in human evolution, that 
there is one flesh of man and another flesh of 
beasts, that the flesh of man contains some- 
thing, a spark, a flame, an endowment, a po- 
tency, unique in glor)?^, essentially differentiat- 
ing him from other creatures, and coming to 
Its own by a path of its own. It is found 
that the controlling forces in human evolution 
are ideas, thoughts, inventions, arising 
mysteriously in some mind by origination or 
initiative, and imitated by others till we have 
customs, laws, religions. 

Now, not to follow in detail the evolution of 
man, is it not evident that we have got our 
bearings again, that we have come back to 
ourselves as rational spirits, and to a deeper, 
surer belief in God who is above all and 
through all and in all? The gain to religion 
may fairly be attributed to the college, for 
science has been studied and taught chiefly in 
the higher institutions and by educated men. 

The Church waited, opposing new views 
for a time, since they seemed to strike at fun- 
damental religious beliefs, as, indeed, the 
early crude theory did. But the Church no 



124 The College to the Church 

longer rejects the truth. No intelHgent per- 
son refuses to beheve that God has worked 
through the ages to carry out his great pur- 
pose, to produce man, upon whom the ends 
of the ages meet. It is seen also that the 
method of God's working is but a secondary 
interest that does not touch, except to 
strengthen, faith in God the Father Almighty, 
whose children we are. While science was 
doing its work independently, and the young 
generation of students was learning the les- 
son, the Church kept right on praying and 
gospeling in the world. The college was 
looking outwards in space and backwards in 
time ; the Church was looking upwards and 
forwards. The college was sailing by the 
log ; the Church was sailing by the fixed stars. 
The college pondered the actual ; the Church 
pondered and produced the transformed ideal. 
The greatest service of the college in respect 
of scientific research has been the nourishing 
of the love of truth, has been intellectual hon- 
esty. She helps the Church to be honest, to 
discard the irrational, to stand squarely with 
the truth which makes men free. 



Mutual Dependence 125 

The scientific interest, which had to do with 
the physical universe and with origins, was 
the commanding interest of the seventh and 
eighth decades of the nineteenth century, from 
i860 to 1880. It is not too much to say that 
in the ninth and tenth decades interest swung 
back from the universe to its noblest inhabi- 
tant, from the natural to the human sciences. 
The absorbing studies of scholars were, and 
still are, anthropology, ethnology, sociology, 
philosophy, ethics, history, literature and re- 
ligion — studies concerning man. That pro- 
found scientific interest was, in the last analy- 
sis, a human interest, for it was seen, as I said, 
that the physical sciences touch directly the 
origin, nature and destination of man. Nor 
was there at any time suspension of direct in- 
terest in the human. The colleges clung to 
the classics, to the languages which contain 
the history and literatures of those ancient 
peoples that attained the highest in art, phil- 
osophy and law. The best poetry of the cen- 
tury was struck out by Browning and Ten- 
nyson at the very time when science was 
changing the conception of man and God, 



126 The College to the Church 

partly, indeed, by reason of that change. In 
the colleges that poetry was and is eagerly 
studied. English literature and the modern 
languages and literatures of Europe took a 
foremost place. Economics became a favor- 
ite study. The historical method was estab- 
lished. The religions of the world were in- 
vestigated, and the Bible, recovered by criti- 
cism as the literature of Judaism and Chris- 
tianity, the greatest literature of the world, 
gained a worthy place in the college curricu- 
lum. 

This regaining of human values the Church 
has shared. The Church no longer regards 
man as totally depraved, worthless and 
wicked, but, in view of his greatness, sees 
"him as incomplete and imperfect, and directs, 
guides, inspires into the ideal life. Tiiis in- 
spiration has come in large part from knowl- 
edge of many-sided man, of the history of men, 
of their attainments, of their possibilities. 

What has the Church been doing in this re- 
spect? What service in this sort has she 
done the college, yes, the world and herself? 
A service which cannot be measured in 



Mutual Dependence 127 

words. She has recovered the humanity of 
Jesus. What was the Church asking down 
to fifty years ago? She asked, concerning 
Christ, How can the divine be human ? Christ 
was divine, was God, was deity, to the Church. 
She looked with suspicion on any recogni- 
tion of his real humanity. She regarded him 
as omniscient and omnipotent. She divided 
the divine from the human, thinking, or try- 
ing to think, that he acted now in his divine, 
now in his human nature, as though when he 
worked miracles he was divine, and when he 
was hungry and weary and when he prayed he 
was human, like two spheres having external 
contact only. For centuries the Church had 
been struggling to save the divine at the ex- 
pense of the human, and had made the 
human unreal, incidental, a mere sem- 
blance. Towards the middle of the nine- 
teenth century a book which startled and 
alarmed the Christian world was published. 
It was Strauss' Life of Jesus, a biography 
like the biography of any great man. 
But it led Christian scholars to investigation 
of the story. Volume after volume, entitled 



128 The College to the Church 

The Life of Christ, The Life of Jesus, ap- 
peared. Preaching presented the human in 
place of the theologic Christ. To-day the 
question is reversed. We ask now. How can 
the human be divine? How can a man be 
God ? Yet it is not a question, for we know 
the divine through the human. God can re- 
veal himself best in a perfect man. Jesus is 
God manifest in the flesh. 

Thus college and Church have been mov- 
ing on parallel lines, the college studying 
actual humanity and exalting it at the very 
time when the Church has been regaining the 
ideal man who is the head, the type, the 
creator of true humanity. This is not mere 
coincidence. The same influences that en- 
throne man afifect us all, giving the natural 
man and the spiritual man. 

We are led one step farther in our compari- 
son. Knowledge of man in his nature, his 
works and his ways, with which the college is 
chiefly occupied, is knowledge of man in so- 
ciety. The old philosophy and even the 
old ethics presented the individual, were sheer 
individualism. But now philosophy and 



Mutual Dependence 129 

ethics, as well as history and economics, are 
social. The newest science is social science. 
Tribes, peoples, nations, the family, the class, 
the State, the school, the Church, constitute 
humanity. There are no individuals apart 
from society. In the college is a mighty 
impulse to social service. The university 
settlement is one expression of it. Training 
for intelligent citizenship is another expres- 
sion. The college itself is a community, a 
society, with common interests, traditions 
and enthusiasms. No man there liveth to 
himself alone. The American college has 
always stood for the preparation of young 
men for great service in the world. Ediicated 
men may be selfish, but a broad education is 
always understood to be not for its own sake, 
not for personal culture merely, but to make 
teachers, leaders, minister? in society. The 
strongest impulse to social, political, philan- 
thropic service, an impulse felt in the Church, 
has come from the college. 

And the Church, on her part, has contributed 
in this generation to the very same tendency. 
For, with the recovery of the humanity of 



IX 



130 The College to the Church 

Christ — in consequence of it, no doubt — there 
has been another marked change. Could 

there be a vaster change than that from the 
salvation of the individual, whether to heaven 
or from hell, but the salvation of the individ- 
ual, from that to the kingdom of God on 
earth? Yet such a change, speaking large- 
ly, has occurred within a half-century. The 
individual is saved, it is true, but he is saved 
by entering into the kingdom of God. The 
Son of man came at first preaching the king- 
dom. He has come again preaching the 
kingdom. The Church is now dominated by 
this idea. The children of God are a society 
beautifying the earth with righteousness and 
love. The interest, now, of all this is, not so 
much that the idea is true, as that it is preva- 
lent, is domesticated, is universally accepted, 
is everybody's way of thinking. We can see 
our fathers following the Pilgrim's Progress, 
fleeing the world, making hairbreadth es- 
capes from ruin, and plodding most of the 
way alone to the celestial city. But now, 
while there may be tumultuous experience in 
passing from the kingdom of darkness to the 



Mutual Dependence 131 

kingdom of light, yet it is into a kingdom on 
earth, a renewed society, a city come down out 
of heaven from God, in which we live and 
work and love and worship. 

For theology the central principle is rapid- 
ly becoming, we may almost say has become, 
the kingdom of God here and now. The 
latest German theology, which some look at 
askance, but which is having a great currency 
over there, and is accepted by evangelical 
people as a preachable and workable gospel, 
is the gospel of the kingdom on earth, the la- 
test, the newest, the oldest, the truest gospel. 

The missionary movement significantly 
marks this change. At first and for a time 
the motive of missions was to save the heathen 
from perdition. We were told how many 
were going down into everlasting death 
each year because they did not have the gospel, 
and were told also that the nerve of missions 
would be cut if it should be surmised that 
there is any hope of their salvation after 
death. The stress of missionary work was 
evangelistic preaching. But now education 
is about as important as preaching. Schools 



132 The College to the Church 

and even colleges are established. We see that 
for all men salvation is not for the future only, 
but also for the present, that it is future be- 
cause it is present. And the nerve of mis- 
sions has not been cut. 

Another sign is the waning of revivals, or, 
when they are promoted, a broadening of the 
object. Our distrust of manufactured re- 
vivals is less by reason of spasmodic interest 
followed by reaction than because they im- 
press the narrow idea of saving one's soul 
through that which is something other than 
personal righteousness and social service. 

On these broad lines of thought, belief and 
life, the Church and the college have been 
moving, in a kind of independence of each 
other, yet in reality under the same influences, 
for the spirit of the times affects all thoughtful 
men and so affects institutions which are sim- 
ply men organized for certain purposes. The 
college has gained knowledge of nature and 
has regained God the almighty and all-wise 
Father. This has affected the Church in 
some measure, but only in secondary measure, 
for religion has to do with God in his moral 



Mutual Dependence 133 

character and in his moral purposes, 
which find only an incidental expression in 
physical nature. The Church has done more 
in this respect than the college, for she has 
kept alive a conception of God who is al- 
mighty, as the God of love. 

The college has exalted the human, gaining 
knowledge of man in his nature, wants and 
history. The Church at the same time has 
recovered the humanity of Christ, the ideal 
man, and has been presenting that ideal, till 
we all come unto a full-grown man, unto the 
measure of the stature of the fulness of 
Christ. 

The college has passed from individualism 
to society, to the philosophy of history, to a 
just economics, to the family and the State. 
The Church has recovered the kingdom of 
God, the ideal society, and has been establish- 
ing it in the world. 

Other points of view might have been taken, 
but some such view must be held as we ponder 
the marvelous extension of knowledge and 
the wonderful change of religious thought 
which have marked the last half or quarter 



134 The College to the Church 

century. And it is difficult to say which has 
done more in these respects, the Church for 
the college or the college for the Church. It 
really is this : on the one side we have the in- 
tellectual man, on the other side the spiritual 
man ; yet they are one and the same man, no 
more to be separated than the light and the 
heat of the sun. If you should sit Sunday 
after Sunday in a college congregation, this 
would become real to you. Students will 

listen to preaching on the real, human Christ 
and on the service of men. Sermons are 
ethical and social, not theological. Preach- 
ers of the several denominations instinctively 
bring the same message to a college. In- 
deed, it is pretty much the same in all pulpits. 
The preaching that is real to us is the hu- 
manizing of man after the pattern of Christ. 

We might stop here with this measurement 
of the mutual indebtedness of Church and col- 
lege. But something should be said of a 
specific, immediate relation of college and 
Church — the Christian ministry. What has 
been indicated concerning thought, belief and 
life bears directly upon the ministry. 



Mutual Dependence 135 

The vast majority of preachers in the Con- 
gregational churches, as well as in some other 
great communions, have been graduates of 
colleges. An educated ministry has been de- 
manded, and, for the most part, thus far, has 
been supplied. The Church is dependent on 
the colleges for ministers of culture and learn- 
ing. There was never greater need of intel- 
ligent and cultivated Christian men in the pul- 
pit than to-day, since the level of intelligence 
in the laity is higher than it ever was before. 
Zeal is no substitute for knowledge. Should 
the pulpits be filled with untrained men, the 
churches would lose immeasurably. 

But are Christian students of gifts and 
culture entering the ministry? Frankly, I 
am obliged to admit that the brightest, ablest 
men are more inclined to enter other profes- 
sions and pursuits. I do not mean that no 
men of that quality become clergymen, nor 
that those not so gifted who embrace that 
profession are not useful pastors, but that the 
great majority of those I have described turn 
to law, medicine, theology, teaching, or busi- 
ness. Many a young man on whom I should 



136 The College to the Church 

like to lay hands of ordination chooses some 
other occupation. The reasons are, not the 
hardships of the minister's life, nor the desire 
to gain material goods, for many enter the 
teaching profession which, neither in the best 
positions nor on the average, is as well paid 
as the ministry, while as many deprivations 
are entailed. What, now, are the reasons 
that gifted men are not attracted to the min- 
istry ? 

One reason, undoubtedly, is theological. 
An educated young man does not believe what 
he supposes a preacher must believe. He 
doubts whether he can meet the challenge of 
creeds and councils. He would like to be a 
preacher, and therefore has some beliefs of 
the most positive character, preachable beliefs 
— the love of God to men, the human, sympa- 
thizing, self-sacrificing Christ, the inevitable 
consequences of sin, the redemption and eleva- 
tion of man by the gospel in the kingdom of 
Christ on earth. But in respect to the Bible, 
while he believes it contains the word of God, 
he does not believe that all of it is the Word 
of God. He does not believe that Jesus had 



Mutual Dependence 137 

all divine attributes. He may not believe in the 
Trinity according to the Nicene Creed. He 
has a hope and, indeed, an opinion that no soul 
will be so lost as to suffer pain everlastingly. 
He cannot believe, at any rate, that this brief 
earthly life determines the eternal destiny of 
every man. Yet it appears to him that he 
may not be ordained unless he assents to 
some or all of these dogmas. A council or 
presbytery will meet him at the threshold and 
will examine him, chiefly in respect to his 
theological opinions. There are councils and 
councils, to be sure, but there is considerable 
liability that he will be challenged at the point 
of his doubts and denials. Councils are kind- 
ly, it is true, but it is difficult to imagine a 
council or presbytery that is not theological. 
Emphasis should be placed on character, abil- 
ity, fitness for the place, on the Christian spirit, 
the common sense, the sanity of the youthful 
servant of Jesus Christ. Can forty men, 
with the best intentions, ascertain all that in 
an hour or two concerning a man they never 
saw before? They can only ascertain his 
opinions on certain doctrines. The proper 



138 The College to the Church 

course is this ; let the local church satisfy itself 
by knowing and hearing the man, by taking 
the judgments of his teachers and friends, and 
by setting him at work, and then, in due time, 
ask the neighboring churches to welcome 
him to the ministry. There is little 
danger that skeptics, agnostics, atheists or 
non-Christian men will press into the pulpit. 
The gate should be wide open, not fastened 
with a rusty padlock. In our hearts we ap- 
plaud a young man who will not be a minister 
at the expense of intellectual honesty. I be- 
lieve, however, that the freedom which pre- 
vails more and more in the churches, that the 
changed conceptions of Christ and of human- 
ity, of which I have spoken, will remove en- 
tirely, as they have removed in part, this ob- 
stacle, so that devoted Christian youths will 
not be deterred from the ministry by a chal- 
lenge to honesty. 

There are other reasons more influential 
than the theological reason in keeping able 
Christian men from becoming clergymen. 
There is a feeling that the ministry is inferior 
in influence, opportunity and power, and in 



Mutual Dependence 139 

general estimation, to other professions and to 
what it used to be. In former times no posi- 
tion was more influential and honorable than 
the clergyman's position. The pulpit was a 
place of power. The minister was the trust- 
ed counselor and friend of all the people. 
But now a multiplicity of duties, social and 
temporal, devolve upon the minister, en- 
croaching on the time he should give to study 
and to preparation for preaching. To a 

large extent he is obliged to serve tables. 
Boys' clubs, King's Daughters, charitat)Ie as- 
sociations, missionary organizations, improve- 
ment classes, committees on this, committees 
on that, Christian Endeavor Societies, and I 
know not how many more associations, ap- 
pliances and activities, may be excellent de- 
vices, but the minister is expected to create 
and guide them all. Many of these activities 
terminate within the church itself, or are for 
m.ere entertainment. If all these things 
must be, they should be directed by the mem- 
bers of the church. A preacher's first and 
great business is to preach, to preach the liv- 
ing gospel in terms and thoughts of to-day. 



140 The College to the Church 

But to bring a fresh message Sunday after 
Sunday he must give himself chiefly to that 
one thing. A gifted young man is ready to 
preach, not in the pride of eloquence, not with 
itching for publicity, but as a great service 
for men, and to put all his intellectual and 
spiritual energy into it. But if he is to or- 
ganize, to sit on committees, to devise so- 
ciables, and to spend half his time visiting 
from house to house, the profession does not 
attract him. Will able young men go into 
law, if they are to be clerks, typewriters, 
sheriffs and gaolers as well as lawyers? Will 
intelligent men go into medicine, if they are to 
be nurses and druggists as well as physicians? 
Let us go right back to the early Church. 
"Now in those days, when the number of the 
disciples was multiplying, there arose a mur- 
muring of the Grecian Jews against the He- 
brews, because their widows were neglected 
in the daily ministration. And the twelve 
called the multitude of the disciples unto them, 
and said. It is not fit that we should forsake 
the word of God, and serve tables. Look 
ye out therefore, brethren, from among you 



Mutual Dependence 141 

seven men of good report, full of the Spirit 
and of wisdom, whom we may appoint over 
this business. But we will continue stedfast- 
ly in prayer, and in the ministry of the word. 
And the saying pleased the whole multitude." 
I do not say that clergymen are to do noth- 
ing but preach and pray. There is a work, 
a personal work, to be done, which young men 
are eager to do, a work for boys and youths 
and men, through clubs and classes and in 
other ways ; a work, too, for people outside 
the churches, for toilers, for the poor and ig- 
norant. If ministers could do such work and 
direct others in it, they would find the deepest 
satisfaction. The numbers of students who 
engage in settlement work show how strongly 
educated men are drawn to a real service for 
their fellows. But that is very different from 
the social, literary and even religious work 
which begins and ends within the church it- 
self. The minister's chief function is to in- 
spire men, not to administer affairs. When 
the pulpit is restored to its dignity and power, 
able ministers of the New Testament will not 
be wanting. I say all this without reserve 



142 The College to the Church 

here, because the pulpit of this church is the 
minister's throne. I beheve the Church is so 
awaking- to the real Christian service which 
is needed that unreasonable and trivial de- 
mands on. the preacher will not continue, and 
that the best Christian students will again be 
drawn into the greatest profession. 

I find another reason, which has much to 
do with the feeling that the ministry is in- 
ferior to other professions, in the numerical 
littleness of congregations. Every village, 
however small, must have its own minister, al- 
though it is only two miles away from another 
small village, must have its own Baptist, Con- 
gregational, Episcopal, Methodist minister. 
It is not to be wondered at that educated young^ 
men of good parts see better service for men 
in some other occupation than preaching and 
pastoring to the fifth part of a village, or to 
a little city congregation (which is even 
worse), and on a precarious tenure of office at 
that. The Catholics are wiser than we in 
this respect. About the best thing that could 
happen would be a church trust. We might 
wish at least that the old geographical parish 
could be restored. 



Mutual Dependence 143 

These are homely considerations, but I be- 
lieve that denominational and local divisive- 
ness and church machinery are obstructing 
Christianity in the world of to-day and are 
keeping suitable men out of the ministry. 
Longing for Christian unity, however, is 
more general and deep than it ever was. We 
all deplore the evils and wastefulness of 
division on trivial differences, and so may ex- 
pect there will be larger consolidation of those 
who profess and call themselves Christians, 
so that we may go with the multitude to the 
house of God to keep holy day. The broad- 
ening of faith to the wideness of the humanity 
of Christ who drav/s all men unto him will 
sweep away minor dift'erences. The kingdom 
of God possessing our service and enthusiasm 
will restore in vast unity the Church of 
Christ. The diversities of operations which 
are needed will be supplied in diversity of 
gifts, which no one man has, not even the min- 
ister, but which God hath distributed severally 
as he will. 

It is a moral and spiritual work to which 
Church and preacher are called. The broader 



144 The College to the Church 

faith and the larger service to which the col- 
lege has greatly contributed will restore 
proportion of belief, will subordinate method 
to life, will give freedom and power to the 
pulpit, will make learning the handmaid of re- 
ligion, and will make the Church the pillar and 
ground of the truth. 



VI 

THE COLLEGE GRADUATE AND 
THE CHURCH 

PRESIDENT WILLIAM J. TUCKER, LL. D. 



X 



THE COLLEGE GRADUATE AND 
THE CHURCH 

"And the first came before him, saying, Lord, 
thy pound hath made ten pounds more. . . . 
And the second came, saying, Thy pound, Lord, 
hath made five pounds. . . . And another came, 
saying, Lord, behold here is thy pound, which I 
kept laid up in a napkin" — Luke 19: 16, 18, 20. 

The college graduate represents one of the 
investments through which society endeavors 
to increase the social capital. The higher 
education, considered from the social point of 
view, is distinctly an investment. Society 
takes the initiative, not the individual, and the 
end sought is the public good. Whether you 
have the college or university founded by the 
Church or by the state or by the capitalist, 
the outcome is the same. You have the so- 
cial institution. And the avowed object of 
this particular social institution is the creation 
of social capital. 

A recent writer has pointed out the econom- 
ic fact that "The great civilized peoples have 



147 



148 The College to the Church 

to-day at their command the means of de- 
veloping the decadent nations of the world. 
These means," he says, "in their material as- 
pects consist of the great excess of saved capi- 
tal which is the result of machine production." 

Transfer this idea to the subject before us 
and you have my precise meaning. The 

modern nation which is morally strong, is 
strong because of a certain surplus of intel- 
lectual and moral wealth at its command 
created by agencies which have been establish- 
ed to produce it. And one of the agencies 
which is everywhere recognized as fitted to se- 
cure this result is the college or university. 
The college is set to increase the common stock 
of necessary, desirable and stimulating ideas ; 
it is set to advance those principles and truths 
of common concern, which are advanced not 
only as they are applied, but also as they are 
renewed and reopened at their intellectual and 
moral sources ; and it is set to arouse and 
vivify the intellect, the imagination and the 
conscience of each incoming generation. 

The college graduate is the product of this 
system of agencies which society has devised 



College Graduate and the Church 149 

to increase the social capital. He may fall 
far below his own ideals or the ideals of so- 
ciety, but still society continues the method of 
production. On the whole, it works well. 
The college graduate is seldom an incom- 
petent. That is the reason why he is made 
an object of remark whenever such is the fact. 
Society is surprised, as well as angered, when- 
ever a college man ignores or fails 
in the social obligation — whenever he says 
to society through indolence, or cowardice, 
or incompetence, "Behold, here is thy 
pound which I kept laid up in a napkin." 
Society is not surprised nor overjoyed, but 
simply expectant when one says, "Thy pound 
hath made five," and another says, "Thy 
pound hath made ten more." 

I propose to ask and to try to answer two 
plain questions : 

First — What is the contribution which the 
college is expected to make to the social capi- 
tal? And, Secondly — If the college makes 
its proper contribution to the social capital, 
what may it reasonably expect in the way of 
support from the Church? 



150 The College to the Church 

First — What is the contribution which the 
college is expected to make to the social capi- 
tal? In naming the three essential forms 
which this contribution may take, I begin with 
the most recent, which you may regard as the 
lowest, namely, that contribution which lies 
in the region of utility. We have reached 
that point in the prodviction of material wealth 
at which the contribution of the school has be- 
come of the first importance. We can make 
no further progress by chance, or luck, or hap- 
hazard discoveries, nor yet by enterprise and 
integrity, unaided. Everything in the way of 
material wealth waits the impulse and the di- 
rection of the educated mind. All gains at the 
sources of material wealth (I do not say in the 
manipulation of it) depend upon the increase 
of mathematical certainty, or upon that in- 
vention which belongs to the trained imagina- 
tion. The real sources of modern wealth 
are not our workshops nor our warehouses, 
but our laboratories and our class-rooms, just 
as these are the real sources of modern power. 
The shot that reaches the mark invisible to the 
eye, is fired not by the strength or skill of the 



College Graduate and the Church 151 

seaman, but by the calculation of the scholar. 
This change in the sources and agencies of 
wealth and power is almost incalculable. The 
money with which England carried on her 
wars against Napoleon came out of her newly 
established factories, which in turn were built 
out of the inventions of plain workmen, no 
one of whom had seen the inside of a uni- 
versity, no one of whom would have been 
greatly helped if he had. But as Mr. Hux- 
ley pointed out, not long before his death, 
France was paying the cost of the Franco- 
Prussian War out of the laboratories of Pas- 
teur. 

The fear is often expressed that the grow- 
ing dependence of material wealth upon the 
educated mind will soon or late commercialize 
education. Without doubt there is a danger 
here, a danger against which the medical pro- 
fession, in its refusal to allow its members to 
profit pecuniarily by any discoveries which 
they may make, utters its serious and perpetual 
protest. But on the other hand we are to re- 
member that practicality is not ignoble. It 
is not dishonorable nor ignoble to create a 



152 The College to the Church 

force which will supply a want. The real 
danger lies in intercepting a beneficent force 
on its way to the want, and in obliging it to 
pay unrighteous toll. 

There has been a marked change in the 
academic estimate put upon utility within the 
century. At the beginning of the century a 
great scientist, in pleading for the pursuit of 
science for science's sake, spoke in lofty dis- 
dain of what he termed "The grand practical 
innovations" of the times. "These rising 
workshops," he said, "these peopled colonies, 
these vessels which furrow the seas, this 
abundance, this luxury, this tumult, all this' 
comes from discoverers in science, and all this 
remains strange to them. The day that a 
doctrine comes into practice they abandon it 
to the populace ; it concerns them no more." 
That was not the tone of science, nor even of 
learning, as the century closed. Practicality 
is no longer ignoble. The scholar who con- 
tributes to the material well-being of society 
is not ashamed of his contribution, nor are his 
fellows ashamed of him. Utility is recog- 
nized as coming within the range of the aca- 
demic contribution to the social capital. 



College Graduate and the Church 153 

But the more distinct contribution, prob- 
ably many of you would say the most dis- 
tinct contribution, of the college to the social 
capital is that of intellectual authority. In- 
tellectual authority is in most demand 
wherever there is the most intellectual activ- 
ity ; for activity, however interesting it may 
be, does not satisfy. Intellectual activity 
amongst us as a people is altogether out of 
proportion to intellectual authority. We 
have the versatile, alert, smart, intelligent 
mind, but the authoritative mind is rare. It 
would be mere arrogance to say that it is not 
found outside of our colleges, or outside of 
academic training. There may be, there often 
is, a personal quality about it, which is inde- 
pendent of conditions. But the conditions 
which are most favorable to its development 
are such as are to be found in our colleges. 
For there you have the requisite continuity of 
thought and that kind of intellectual morality 
in which authorit)^ lies. A university has 
been defined as the place "where the highest 
culture of one generation is best transmitted 
to the ablest youths of the next." It is there- 



154 The College to the Church 

fore a place of safety against mere newness, 
mere ferment, mere experimentation. I know 
the danger of conservatism. I know the 
danger of setting up the traditional, the con- 
ventional, in place of the living truth. But 
authority must have in it the element of time. 
It cannot be extemporized. When the au- 
thoritative man speaks, it is not his voice alone 
that we hear nor the voice of the better men 
of his time, but the voice also of the progres- 
sive past. Authority is the consenting opin- 
ion of the past which lives on in the present, 
and of the present, thus reinforced, reaching 
forth into its own future. It is one part of 
the business of the higher education to give 
steadiness and momentum of thought and of 
opinion, and even of belief. It is one part of 
its business to keep the generations from pull- 
ing apart and breaking that continuity of in- 
tellectual power which gives authority. 

I have said also that the conditions are fa- 
vorable in colleges for intellectual morality. I 
mean by this that they are usually free from 
the disturbing influence of immoral motives. 
There is no reason whv the mind should not 



College Graduate and the Church 155 

be trained to think toward the truth. The 
element of personal gain or advantage is ab- 
sent. The question has no place, "What 
will it profit me if I reach this rather than that 
conclusion?" The high thinking which is 
assumed may not always be going on, but 
there may always be straight and honest think- 
ing. You may say to me — ^the results 
do not always appear in the college graduate. 
There is at least no guarantee against a decline 
on his part in intellectual morality. I have in 
mind a letter bearing on this point written to a 
benefactor of education, from which I am per- 
mitted to quote. "Now and then" says the 
'writer, "quite possibly too often, I find float- 
ing through my mind doubts about the pure- 
ly moral value of so much education as is now 
being provided for. Nearly every time I mix 
in business affairs, I have the fact forced upon 
my observation that college graduates are 
quite as dishonest and expert sharpers as their 
less fortunate brothers. I fear that I am 
gradually being forced to the adoption of a 
new motto, 'fewer churches, less learning and 
more honesty.' How do you like it ?" This 



156 The College to the Church 

was the impatient, half earnest word of a well 
known lawyer, a gallant soldier and reformer 
and a lover of books beyond most scholars, a 
word against which no general denial can be 
entered but of which it can be said that the 
fact which impresses us in all such cases is that 
of their tremendous inconsistency. That is the 
tribute we pay in our minds to the training 
which has gone before. And it is for this 
reason, I suppose, that society guards so care- 
fully the freedom of university teaching. It 
is assumed to be honest teaching. It may be 
impracticable — that is a frequent criticism — it 
may be foolish even as it passes out of its 
sphere — there is nothing to prevent college 
professors from speaking out of their igno- 
rance as well as out of their wisdom — but it is 
not often charged with dishonesty, with dis- 
turbing influences, or with ulterior motives. 
The morality of the intellect is the most 
precious aim and outcome of the university, 
and so long as men believe this to be the fact, 
they will look to the university for intellectual 
authority. 

The other contribution which the college 



College Graduate and the Church 157 

makes to the social capital — you may or may 
not think it of equal importance with 
that which we have been considering; 
in some respects I should consider 
it higher — is sentiment. The historic col- 
leges nearly all came into being under the im- 
pulse of the passion for humanity. The mo- 
tive as well as the circumstance of their origin 
set them toward the heroic. Their history is 
still a challenge. In the old cemetery where 
the founder of my college lies, there runs 
this epitaph on his tomb : 

By the Gospel he subdued the ferocity of the savage. 
And to the civilized he opened new paths of science. 
Traveler: Go, if you can, and deserve the sublime 
reward of such merit. 

I like to go there from time to time and read 
this challenge out of the heart of the 
eighteenth century. It seems to say to me, 
"Man of the twentieth century, go, if you can, 
do an equal task, declare an equal purpose, 
show an equal spirit." 

When I speak of sentiment as a contribu- 
tion of our colleges, especially of our historic 
colleges, I mean available sentiment, sentiment 



158 The College to the Church 

which can be communicated and organized and 
put into action. Consecration to high ends 
is an individual act, but I suspect that it is 
often held back and thwarted by untoward cir- 
cumstances. The life is committed to lower 
ends before it can reach out to higher ends. 
Freedom of choice is gone. The advantage 
of the college is that freedom of choice is of- 
ten held open to the last. One may commit 
himself in the comparative maturity of his 
powers to the greatest and most satisfying 
ends. He has not yet "given hostages to 
fortune." The opportunity for the highest 
and for the noblest consecration is still before 
him. The years of this delayed or retarded 
choice, which rnake up the college period, I 
count to be of inestimable value, in the interest 
of the great choices and the great consecra- 
tions. If you should eliminate it you would 
eliminate with it a vast deal of the heroic 
work of the world. More decisions looking 
to the missionary service are made in college 
than in all previous stages of training. The 
college is more potent than the home in the 
incentives to a devoted life. Hence our col- 



College Graduate and the Church 159 

leges are the recruiting ground for all agencies 
which do their work at the heart of humanity. 
The unfailing appeal meets there the unfailing 
response. This is the fact. Appearances 
may give a contrary impression. The side of 
college life which is turned to the public does 
not seem to be serious, it often appears friv- 
olous. The public sees here, as elsewhere, 
what it likes to see ; it follows the life in 
which it is interested. It is not that colleges 
play more than they work, but that the public 
at large cares more for their play than for 
their work. Deeper than the currents of 

physical life which runs at times so swiftly are 
the currents of the spiritual life. The man of 
the abounding physical life may be also the 
man of the abounding spiritual life. Few 
men, during their college course, are out of 
reach of high incentives, and some man is al- 
ways yielding to them. Sentiment, in the form 
of some cleat, distinct and noble ambition, is 
never absent from college life. 

These are the contributions which the col- 
lege may be expected to make, and which it 
does make to the social capital : — utility, intel- 
lectual authority and sentiment. 



i6o The College to the Church 

I do not speak in this connection of the 
other well known things which it offers to the 
general social life. It is one function of the 
college to give color and picturesqueness to 
our somewhat hard and dull social atmosphere. 
The American college is the brightest, the 
happiest, the most hopeful of all our social 
institutions. I do not except even the home. 
But I am speaking of those social contribu- 
tions which go to make up capital, that surplus 
of intellectual and moral power with which 
as a nation we may affect the world. 

And now, in so far as these contributions are 
genuine and are being made, what has the col- 
lege to say to the Church? I do not mean by 
the Church any form of ecclesiasticism. I 
refer to it as the representative of Christian- 
ized society. What is the message of the 
college to the Church in regard to the use of 
this social capital, which, through the colleges 
and through other means, is increasing far be- 
yond even our material wealth? 

The work of the college is largely creative; 
the work of the Church is largely distributive. 
The distinction is not absolute, but it is real. 



College Graduate and the Church i6i 

The Church is at the center of all life. It is 
everywhere. It is of the country and of the 
city. It has access to men under every con- 
dition and circumstance. It deals in organi- 
zation. It can meet men in the mass and as in- 
dividuals, and though it does not attempt to 
cover every variety of interest, nothing is 
foreign to it which is of any deep concern to 
humanity. 

What, then, may the college, in so far as it 
contributes to the material well-being of so- 
ciety ask of the Church at this point? Clear- 
ly and directly this, that the Church shall aid 
in the proper distribution of material wealth. 
The college enters the field as a producer, 
mainly through science. But the beneficence 
of science lies in the fact that its results are 
for all. It deals in those large forces which 
work for all. Science is the almoner of 

nature, and nature knows no distinctions. 
The sun shines and the rain falls upon the just 
and upon the unjust. Science in its bounty 
cannot accept the limitations of art. Art de- 
lights in quality. It ministers to the elect. It 
demands conditions of its disciples, even of its 



XI 



1 62 The College to the Church 

patrons. But science, when once it has ex- 
pressed itself in results, asks no conditions of 
those who receive it, not even appreciation, but 
goes its beneficent way, abundant and im- 
partial as nature. 

The Church, as representing the moral 
power of society, ought to match the bene- 
ficence of science by opening and widening 
the channels of distribution. The school as 
the producer, through science, of the new 
wealth, has the right to ask this. Charity 
offers no sufficient moral outlet for the new 
abundance. Charity hardly covers more than 
the pension list of the Church. The material 
well-being which the new order allows and 
demands, demands because it allows it, is in- 
finitely more than the care of the disabled. It 
means new life all round, a closer connection 
between the individual, whoever he may be, 
and the means of his growth and enlargement. 

The charge to be brought against the 
Church in this matter is not its lack of kind- 
ness or good will, but its lack of initiative. It 
may love men with the heart ; it does not love 
them with the mind. The message therefore 



College Graduate and the Church 163 

of the college to the Church is — study men, 
understand the conditions of their life and 
work, measure the forces which are against 
them and the forces which are for them, help 
them to help themselves. And this message 
is not in word only. By simple and unob- 
strusive methods the college has organized the 
social settlement. The social settlement puts 
a group of college graduates into a neighbor- 
hood which needs them, first, to live there, 
then to know their neighbors, then to make 
their neighbors know one another, then to 
make all agencies available from within, re- 
ligious, educational, charitable, municipal, 
actually helpful to the residents of the neigh- 
borhood, then to bring in quickening 
and freshening influences from the outside, 
art, music, books and, above all, people worth 
knowing, then to study the economic condi- 
tions under which the average man works, 
with a view to intelligent advice to him, or of 
intelligible action in his behalf. The college 
settlement is an agency for bringing back the 
isolated, depleted and depressed parts of our 
great cities into the general circulation, so that 



164 The College to the Church 

the rich and abundant Hfe of the whole may 
flow into and through every part. It is in 
its beginning but it has made its beginning in 
judgment and invention as well as in en- 
thusiasm and in sacrifice. 

But what has the college to ask of the 
Church in the furtherance of the intellectual 
life ? Much every way, but chiefly in the ap- 
plication of intellectual power to religion. If 
religion has in any way ceased to be interest- 
ing to men, the fault is not in religion. 

In an after-dinner speech by the chief justice 
of this commonwealth, he quoted the remark 
of a friend to the effect that "after all, the only 
interesting thing is religion," and then added 
for himself, "I think it is true, if you take the 
word a little broadly and include under it the 
passionate awe we feel in face of the mystery 
of the universe." 

The message of the college to the Church at 
this point is. Do not make religion uninterest- 
ing in the attempt to make it interest- 
ing. Do not go over into the trivial, the in- 
cidental, the remote in the search for interest 
or impression. It is not the sensation of 



College Graduate and the Church 165 

the hour which interests men rehgiously, but 
rather the "inevitable questions," the everlast- 
ing realities. Religion appeals to men partly 
by what it says and partly by what it cannot 
say. Its appeal is alike to reason and to faith, 
but to a reason which is not unbelieving, and 
to a faith which is not irrational. 

The intellectual approach to religion is the 
commanding approach. If you are ever in- 
clined to doubt it, go back to the New Testa- 
ment and read it. The power of the pulpit 
lies in the greatness and in the nearness of its 
subjects, but this nearness would avail noth- 
ing if the subjects themselves were not great. 
Preachers who have drawn men, and held them, 
and moved them have realized and illustrated 
this fact, the uneducated and educated alike, 
Moody as well as Phillips Brooks. I do not 
violate the proprieties of this time or place 
when I say that the steadily rising power of 
this pulpit lies in its handling of the great, 
vital, sensitive, difficult, "interesting" sub- 
jects of religion. It is the characteristic of 
the regular occupant of this pulpit that he has 
the ability and the courage to speak in the 



i66 The College to the Church 

great terms of religion, and the natural result 
is the listening ear of men here and elsewhere, 
I agree entirely with what has been said, as I 
understand, by my predecessors in this course, 
that the time has come when the Church must 
impress upon the men in our colleges the fact 
that they want men of power in the ministry. 
The Church has been too indifferent about this 
impression. They have been content to go 
into the open market for the supply of their 
recurring wants, without concerning them- 
selves about the sources of supply. I should 
like to see a church, I should like to see 
churches strong enough to support a staff of 
ministers, go to our colleges, pick the best men 
they can find and say to them, "We want you, 
there is your call to the ministry; will you 
accept it and fit yourself for it?" 

But I have maintained that a further con- 
tribution of the college to the social capital is 
sentiment — responsiveness, that is, to noble 
calls, the ambition to undertake the ar- 
duous and the heroic. If this be so, how 
can the Church best support this spirit in our 
colleges? What is the message of the col- 



College Graduate and the Church 167 

lege to the Church at this point? You may 
at first question my answer, which is this : 
The support which sentiment in the form of 
consecration to high ends needs to-day above 
all things is morality, plain, undeniable moral- 
ity ; and until we can have more public moral- 
ity it is not of much use to ask for more con- 
secration of the kind to which I have referred 
among young men. 

Unfortunately, I can give you a clear il- 
lustration of my meaning. The past century 
was a missionary century. It began and 
continued under the incentive of motives for 
the redemption of the world. The saying of 
young Mills to his college friends, "We ought 
to carry the gospel to dark and heathen lands, 
and we can do it if we will," caught the heart, 
the conscience and the faith of the Church. 
As a result the colleges poured out their 
wealth of consecrated life into dark and hea- 
then lands. The record of the century has been 
a continuous record of heroism filling its pages 
with the names of heroes and martyrs. But, 
lo ! as the century ends they and their work are 
discredited in the eyes of the world. 



i68 The College to the Church 

Christendom has been exposed before pagan- 
ism. The very nations which have sent out 
apostles to preach the gospel have shown that 
they have not learned how to keep the com- 
mandments. What chance has the mission- 
ary in China, under the present ethics of 
Christendom? You recall the proverb, "In 
the presence of arms the laws are silent." It 
looks as if we must add "The gospel also." 
It is very difficult to know what to say to 
young men in these days of inconsistency and 
confusion. Suppose a young man of zeal 
and integrity should ask one of you where he 
could put his moral power to the best ad- 
vantage, or according to the great need to- 
day? What would you tell him? That 
would hardly have been an open question at 
the beginning of the century. Mills gave the 
true as well as the heroic answer. What has 
made the difference torday? The failure of 
Christendom to support Christianity through 
its practical moralities. For "Christendom," 
as was said by Professor Christlieb, "is the 
world's Bible." "Ye are our epistle . . . 
known and read of all men." The Church 



College Graduate and the Church 169 

has been set back nobody knows how long by 
the behavior of Christian nations in China. 
And a hke result must follow in degree every- 
where wherever there is a break between the 
faith and the morals of Christendom. There- 
fore I argue that the only sufficient support of 
sentiment in our college is morality in the 
Church and the nation. 

In bringing to a close this course on the 
Message of the College to the Church, I can- 
not forbear an acknowledgment both to those 
who invited these conferences and to those 
who have supported them by their pres- 
ence. It is well that there should be the 
interchange of serious thought between those 
who represent the great social institutions. 
The interests at stake are vital. The college 
and the Church touch the life within them and 
the life without. It is every man's concern 
what they are and what they do. They are 
not above popular criticism. But as every 
man should be his own most severe and 
sternest critic, so every institution, set to the 
uses of society, should have the power of self- 
examination and rigorous self -analysis. I 



170 The College to the Church 

know of nothing so serious for men or insti- 
tutions as the interpretation of duty, and yet 
nothing can be more simple, if the primitive 
tests are kept continually in sight. Of col- 
lege and Church alike, of state and nation, of 
anything to which is committed the high privi- 
lege of duty, the old prophetic question may 
be asked, as truly as of the individual soul : 
"What is it," O College, O Church, O Na- 
tion, "which the Lord thy God doth require of 
thee, but to do justly, to love mercy, and to 
walk humbly with thv God?" 



OCT 3 1901 



